In the past, minority ethnic people - especially black young men - were much more likely to be stopped and searched by the police, in the belief that they had been involved in stealing. In the mid 1990s in London 20% of the population were from minority ethnic groups, but they made up 43% of those stopped and searched.

At the same time, only 13% of the 442,800 people stopped and searched were actually arrested, so being stopped didn't mean that they had done anything.
(These figures are from an answer given in Parliament, December 1994)

This led to lots of bad feeling towards the police. In 1997 half of the official complaints by black people against the London police were about being stopped and searched. In the rest of the country a report in 1995 showed that African-Caribbean youths were more likely than any other group to be

• stopped in the street (though no more likely to be arrested as a result)
• prosecuted rather than cautioned
• charged with more serious offences
• remanded in custody
• plead not guilty
• and either be acquitted or receive a custodial sentence.

There have been some cases proved of racism inside the police force. In 1997, five police officers were made to leave the force because of their racist behaviour. In the same year the head of the Police Complaints Authority said that the number of complaints about racist treatment of officers by other officers would damage the reputation of the police.

In 1999, the Stephan Lawrence Inquiry report was published. It stated that the London police force was institutionally racist. Since then, the police have been monitoring:

• The number of recorded racist incidents
• The use of stop and search
• Surveys of public satisfaction

The police have been running various projects to make stop and search fairer, and the law was changed too. All the same, government figures showed that in 2002/3 Black people were 6.4 times more likely to be stopped and searched as white people. .

But something else has changed. Because of fears about terrorism (but before the attacks of 9/11 in New York and 7/7 in London) new laws have been passed about stopping people in the street. In 2001 about 10,000 people a year were stopped as terrorist suspects; in 2005 it was 36,000. Most of these have been from ethnic groups who might be Muslims.