Stop And Search Saves Lives, It Must Continue: Ian Collins

3 May 2017, 10:58 | Updated: 3 May 2017, 11:49

Ian Collins insists that Stop And Search saves lives and critics of it are simply playing the race card.

The father of murdered schoolboy Damilola Taylor has called on new Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick to increase stop and search to combat the “uncontrollable” spate of knife crime in London.

Theresa May restricted the use of Stop And Search during her time as Home Secretary. 

But Ian says that if it saves one life, then it must be considered a success.

He said: "I have yet to hear, yet to hear a sane argument against Stop And Search, apart from the fact that some people got the hump and cried racism. That's the only argument I've ever heard.

"You know who the person is responsible for the fact that we have less Stop And Search? Theresa May, when she was Home Secretary, decreed that this is a tool that should be used sparingly and I can't specifically remember the words of the directive, but it was on the lines of, you know, we need to do less of this. No, Theresa May, we need to do much more of this.

"It doesn't mean you drive down the road and soon you see somebody who happens to be under sixteen, you stop them, slam them up against a wall and start searching their clothes. It doesn't mean that at all.

"But you just use your head, you use your intelligence, which is what most police officers do. That whole police radar that is used in these cases, police who know their patch, police who know what areas, what estates within areas, what families within areas, what faces within areas. Yeah, those people.

"Stop them as often as you have to, if that means taking a knife off another kid and saving a life of someone else."