I just typed out a big post, hit add comment - "link has expired", highlighted the text, forgot to copy, refreshed and lost it. Fix this already, HN!
Similar laws also exist in the UK. Unfortunately both our politicians and activist organisations such as 38 Degrees completely ignore the effects of them. I've tried taking political action against this and have been met with canned responses and ignored outright.
> Analysis by the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Open Society Justice Initiative shows during the past 12 months a black person was 29.7 times more likely to be stopped and searched than a white person. That figure was 26.6 the previous year.
We also have a "stop and account" law, where a police officer may ask you what you are doing and why you are where you are. Recently, the obligation for police to record these encounters has been removed.
> From 7 March 2011 we have removed the national requirement to record stop and account, in order to reduce police bureaucracy. Instead we have allowed police forces to make a local decision on whether they feel that recording stop and account is necessary. Those forces with little evidence of disproportionate use and little community concern should no longer need to spend valuable police hours completing forms, monitoring records and collating statistics.
> Five out of the 10 forces most likely to use stop-and-account powers disproportionately against black people – West Midlands, Avon and Somerset, Thames Valley, Sussex and Hertfordshire – have halted recording the race of people they have stopped.
> One experienced officer said colleagues could use the power, which does not require reasonable suspicion of criminality, to justify searching someone, which does: "It could lead to a suspicion to arise. Why are you not talking to me? Why aren't you answering questions?"
So you're not officially obliged but in practical terms, you are.
The worst thing is the heavy duty denial by the authorities that there is anything wrong with this.
Similar laws also exist in the UK. Unfortunately both our politicians and activist organisations such as 38 Degrees completely ignore the effects of them. I've tried taking political action against this and have been met with canned responses and ignored outright.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jan/14/stop-search-racial...
> Analysis by the London School of Economics (LSE) and the Open Society Justice Initiative shows during the past 12 months a black person was 29.7 times more likely to be stopped and searched than a white person. That figure was 26.6 the previous year.
We also have a "stop and account" law, where a police officer may ask you what you are doing and why you are where you are. Recently, the obligation for police to record these encounters has been removed.
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/police/powers/stop-and-search/
> From 7 March 2011 we have removed the national requirement to record stop and account, in order to reduce police bureaucracy. Instead we have allowed police forces to make a local decision on whether they feel that recording stop and account is necessary. Those forces with little evidence of disproportionate use and little community concern should no longer need to spend valuable police hours completing forms, monitoring records and collating statistics.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/sep/22/police-record-race-...
> Five out of the 10 forces most likely to use stop-and-account powers disproportionately against black people – West Midlands, Avon and Somerset, Thames Valley, Sussex and Hertfordshire – have halted recording the race of people they have stopped.
> One experienced officer said colleagues could use the power, which does not require reasonable suspicion of criminality, to justify searching someone, which does: "It could lead to a suspicion to arise. Why are you not talking to me? Why aren't you answering questions?"
So you're not officially obliged but in practical terms, you are.
The worst thing is the heavy duty denial by the authorities that there is anything wrong with this.