PC Gavin Pascall, Supt Vincent Peters, Ahmed Yussuf, Mark Blake and Hafid Ali

CHILDREN as young as 10 are being stopped and searched by the police in Camden, it was revealed at a meeting this week.

Young people from across the borough met with police officers and stakeholders at a Safer Neighbourhood Board meeting in the council chamber on Tuesday evening to improve the relationship between the police and young people.

Eight teenagers out of approximately 35 at the meeting said that they had been stopped and searched by the police. Muminur Rahman, youth team manager at King’s Cross Brunswick Neighbourhood Association (KCBNA), said he has been stopped and searched 50 times, with no further action taken, since he was 13. He’s now 29.

But Superintendent Vincent Peters said that “positive outcomes” from stop and searches were improving.

“I’m not going to sit here and say we get things right 100 per cent of the time, because we don’t,” he said.

“Across the Met Police, since Covid the volume of stop and search has massively reduced and positive outcomes are going up, disproportionality is coming down. “It’s not coming down quickly enough but I do think we’re going in the right direction.”

Hafid Ali, co-chair of Camden’s Stop and Search Monitoring Group (SSMG) and co-founder of Camden United Football Club, said he got involved with the group because he was wrongly arrested for something that was not his fault when he was younger.

Mr Ali said: “I ended up getting stopped 20 or so times in three to four months. The way I was getting stopped was literally like the videos you see in films: multiple police cars, one coming in front of you, one from behind. On different occasions armed police were getting called for back-up. It was a lot and I was very frustrated at the time.”

He added: “As much as we can sit here and say we don’t trust the police, if anything bad did happen they would probably be the first people we would call. So for me that’s why it’s very important that we have a good relationship with the police.”

Mark Blake, a former project manager with Camden’s Safer Neighbourhood Board, said: “We’ve now got children around 10 and 11 regularly experiencing these police powers.”

Ahmed Yussuf, co-chair of (CSSMG), said he is pursuing a career in law based on his experiences with the police.

He told the New Journal: “I’ve been stopped and searched outside my home in King’s Cross during Covid. I’ve been strip-searched. It was Section 60, relating to a shooting. I understand the circumstances, but it was the way it was handled. I was handcuffed in front of my house. My brothers were handcuffed. It was late at night. People started coming from around the community.”

But he said at the meeting: “We’re not against the use of stop and search. We’re against the misuse of stop and search. I’ve been stopped and searched numerous times, countless times, too many times for my liking. But when it was conducted fairly and properly I didn’t mind it too much.”

Police officers emphasised that people can complain to the police and the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) if they disagree with how the search was carried out.

PC Gavin Pascall said that on the first day of training police are taught how to professionally carry out stop and search.

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