Those Pesky Drugs Stops

Last updated on October 16th, 2023 at 07:39 pm

Last updated on October 16th, 2023 at 07:39 pm

Before I begin, I need to make it clear that anything you read here only applies to those pesky drugs stops in the Metropolitan Police District, the rest of you can read on, or go back to sleep, up to you.

Following on from my previous post about the ‘disproportionate’ Stop/Searches in London, there was some implied (or maybe actual) criticism about the number of stops which were carried out for Drugs, if Weapons were the problem.

One of my loyal readers (@obbsie) actually said something like “if only we could tell how many Drugs Stops were done that found a weapon”. Well, maybe we can (in London).

In my rambles around the interweb I stumbled across a huge (and I really do mean huge) dataset for Stops and Searches by the Met.

As far as I can tell it contains 24 months worth of data on a rolling basis for every OCU in London.

Let’s get started

Over the past 24 months (whole, complete months) there have been a total of 486.030 Stop/Searches recorded within the Met.

318,273 of these Stop/Searches were for Drugs a huge majority I can agree.

83,753 were for weapons (of any kind).

Now the clever bit, out of the 318,273 Drugs stops, 3,017 produced a Weapons find, any type of weapon. Included in the 3,017, 213, turned up a Firearm, and 2,804 produced a Knife/Blade/Pointed Implement find.

So, maybe all of those Drugs Stops weren’t so pointless after all. 3,017 Weapons taken of the streets of the Metropolis in the most recent 48 months, for much of which London was in ‘Lockdown‘ for. 4 Weapons PER DAY found by looking for DRUGS.

Just to complete the picture, the 3,017 persons found with weapons was comprised as below

• 1,067 were White
• 1,178 were Black
• 361 were Asian
• 15 were Oriental
• 110 were Middle Eastern
• 49, Ethnicity Not Recorded
• 121 were Female
• 2,632 were Male
• 1 was Gender Not Recorded
• 50 were Gender V (no, I don’t know what that means)

Personally, and I may be alone here, I think that 4 weapons per day, by stopping people suspected of carrying drugs is not only valid but worthwhile. Over 3,000 weapons taken off the streets in 48 months, in addition to the other Stop/Searches targeted at finding Weapons, plus, how many lives saved? How many families saved from the devastation of losing a family member? Sadly we all know that won’t be enough for some, I won’t give them the satisfaction of naming them, but many of us know who they are.

Additionally, and for the sake of completeness, we have the 83,753 Stop/Searches targeted at finding Weapons. How did they fare? 5,542 of those proved Positive for Weapons

• 1,776 were White
• 2,782 were Black
• 532 were Asian
• 41 were Oriental
• 197 were Middle Eastern
• 124 were Ethnicity Not Known or NotRecorded
• 243 were Female
• 5,114 were Male
• 2 were Unknown
• 93 were Gender V (still no idea)

Once again, my personal opinion, is that these figures are not only shocking, albeit I do concede that the Metropolis is a large area, but represents excellent work by our fine and brave Police Officers who get portrated as Racist Thugs and Bullies for doing it, when all they actually intend to do is to keep London and Londoners safe, the Law-Abiding and the Law-Breaking without fear or favour.