Rate of black people stopped and searched by Dorset Police higher than national average

DORSET Police is to be questioned over why stop-and-search figures for black people remain high in the county.

The latest nationally produced figures show officers across Dorset continuing to stop a higher percentage of black people, compared with the county’s population, than almost anywhere else, writes Trevor Bevins of the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

A black person is almost 20 times more likely than a white person to be subject to a stop-and-search in Dorset – compared with the national average of seven times.

The last time the figures were produced it was 25 times more likely locally, with the county said to have been a national outlier for at least a decade.

At Dorset’s latest police and crime panel all but three members declined to ask any questions or comment.

But Cllr Sherry Jespersen asked whether the time had now come for answers.

“It seems to me that this has drifted on for a decade – is this the time when we say enough is enough?” she said.

Simon Bullock, chief executive of the police and crime commissioner’s office, spoke about "elephants in the room" over the issue.

He said the key points were whether the Dorset stop-and-search figures represented an anomaly or were symptomatic of a wider problem within the force. The second question was whether the force's use of stop-and-search was having an impact on crime.

He said that over the years the Dorset force and the police and crime commissioner’s office had found themselves in “an unhelpful loop where positions have become entrenched” and no understanding had been reached over the figures.

When the issue was last raised in September 2020 it led to the resignation from the panel of a councillor who made what was perceived by some as an inappropriate remark over stopping and searching black people. The panel later disassociated themselves from the comment.

A new panel to look into the issue has now been set up, meeting for the first time next week and reporting back towards the end of next year.

Police and crime commissioner David Sidwick told an online meeting he was determined to tackle the reasons but needed some additional data and to ask further questions of the Chief Constable.

He said the new panel would be expected to review the statistics, look at bodycam images and shadow police officers.

“I am going to treat this as a priority improvement area and I will keep challenging it until we get there,” he said.

For the year ending 31st March 2021 there were 2,678 stop and searches in Dorset – 2,032 of these involved white people, 178 black people, 62 Asian people, and 126 people from other ethnic minorities. The remaining 280 were unknown.