Police stop and search 100 people a day under new anti-terror laws

[Hestia]

Police stop and search 100 people a day under new anti-terror laws
By Ben Russell, Political Correspondent
Published: 25 January 2006

Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, is facing an onslaught over the Government's anti-terror laws after figures showed nearly 36,000 people were stopped and searched under the emergency powers last year. The number of people stopped and searched each year has soared since the Act came into force in 2001, when 10,200 people were stopped. It rose to 33,800 in 2003-04.

Campaigners will mount a legal challenge in the House of Lords today, as they attempt to limit the laws giving police sweeping powers to stop people even if they have no grounds to suspect them of a crime.

The Home Office revealed that people were being stopped at the rate of nearly 100 a day under the powers used to detain a peace campaigner, Walter Wolfgang, at last year's Labour Party conference.

Figures in a Home Office report showed that 35,776 searches of vehicles and people were recorded under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act, which was passed six years ago. Despite the high number of people stopped, only 455 were arrested. The newest statistics, which cover the 2004-05 financial year and do not include the aftermath of the July bomb attacks on London, represent a record use of the powers since the Act came into force.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article340820.ece

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

1. Related: "We don't live in a police state yet, but we're heading there"

Henry Porter
Sunday January 22, 2006

The argument for social control goes like this: if you've done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear from a national data bank of identity/the terrorism act/the tapping of MPs' phones/the use of the public-order act to control protest and limit free expression/the new powers of arrest/the retention of DNA samples taken from innocent juveniles.

Over the past few months, I have listened to five people airily make this pitch. Not one of them was a complete fool; it's just that they haven't been paying attention to the Prime Minister's unflagging mission to increase the power of the state over the individual, to the shoal of anti-libertarian laws which have slipped through a mesmerised parliament.

If they have noticed anything, they tend, without much thought, to interpret it as a government doing its best to make us safer from terrorists and criminals. They conclude that if you are neither a terrorist nor a criminal, you have nothing to worry about. Wrong.

They have only to consider the 24,000 juveniles who have not been cautioned, charged or convicted with any crime, yet whose DNA has been retained by the police, to wonder if some extra-parliamentary commission should be set up to examine the state of liberty in Britain and the motives of this odious regime of sinister mediocrities.

(...)

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1692144,00.html

[jilln]

2. anyone know how the new law is going in Florida?

The one that lets them demand ID whenever they feel like it?

[Angry Girl]

3. And what about Deborah Davis, arrested for not showing ID on public bus

Apparently in Denver you don't even need laws to arrest someone....

http://www.papersplease.org/davis/
Papers, Please

One morning in late September 2005, Deb was riding the public bus to work. She was minding her own business, reading a book and planning for work, when a security guard got on this public bus and demanded that every passenger show their ID. Deb, having done nothing wrong, declined. The guard called in federal cops, and she was arrested and charged with federal criminal misdemeanors after refusing to show ID on demand.

On the 9th of December 2005, Deborah Davis will be arraigned in U.S. District Court in a case that will determine whether Deb and the rest of us live in a free society, or in a country where we must show "papers" whenever a cop demands them.

http://www.papersplease.org/davis/

[AX10]

5. Facsism is here.

:argh:

[WePurrsevere]

4. Wow, I wonder what the statistics in the US are then. The US Border Patrol

often with the assistance of the Park Police or NY Troopers have check points up near the Canadian border on a regular basis (especially in nicer weather). They ask "border crossing" type questions mostly and will passively and occasionally actively search cars and trucks at whim. Mind you this is even an hour+ or so away from the border itself.

Of course if someone really had a mind to get around many of these check points many of them could with a bit of brain power, good local map, a decent car, a tank of gas and a bit of time. These may catch a (stupid) pot supplier now and then but mostly it just seems to serve to irritate the locals trying to get from point A to point B using as little time and gas as possible.

[HuffleClaw]

7. WHAAAAAAAAT ??????

checkpoints? seriously? is that even legal? that is SCARY.

'show me your papers'

[WePurrsevere]

9. Yes, they're basically check points. It's all done under the auspices of

Homeland Security and the "Patriot Act".

They don't usually ask us for our license or such but they do ask basic questions just as they would if we were actually crossing the border between the US and Canada. They also will often walk around your vehicle... look inside through the windows... use a mirror to look under the vehicle, etc. They sometimes have a trained dog as well who gives all the cars and trucks the sniff test and sometimes they'll pull someone over to "look inside" their vehicle/trunk.

What's truly "funny", other then you can get around these check points with relative ease if you know the way and don't mind the drive and gas use, is that, at least the ones we know of, are done during the day and usually in nicer weather. I guess they figure terrorists and drug runners only try to sneak into the US when it's nice out and during the day. :eyes:

[uppityperson]

6. More protecting of our civil liberties?

[HuffleClaw]

8. "John Catt, 81, an anti-war campaigner, has been stopped twice..."

yup. its clearly being used for purely political reasons, to crush dissent. 'anti-terrorism' my foot. and this is exactly what bush wants to create in the us with that 'uniformed SS' idea. (at least SS is the right name for 'em)

[struggle4progress]

10. kick

:kick: