What sort of mojo do you want your police officer to bring with them the next time you’re stopped and searched? The Metropolitan police asked Londoners to help them use this procedure better: one quoted consultation response was to stop using ‘bad energy’ in such an encounter. Perhaps the answer to London’s awful street crime problem is more astrology than criminology. Such comments have influenced the creation of a new ‘charter’ eighteen months in the making, which signals the advent of kinder, gentler frisking in the nation’s capital.
Of course, most people reading this piece will never have reason to be approached by a police officer in the street, detained and subject to their possessions being examined. However polite or empathetic your chartered police officer is, it is plainly undignified. Unless, of course, you are carrying a bladed weapon or drugs, or often both, intent on committing one of the 15,859 knife-related crimes detected by the Met last year – up 24 per cent on 2023.
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