"You know you don't have to give your name and address?"

Thousands of people across Britain have been stopped and searched illegally by police using Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, the Home Office has revealed.

One of the most flagrant of these illegal uses was in London in April 2004, involving 840 people.

Fourteen police forces in the UK including the Metropolitan Police, City Police and Thames Valley misused powers on 40 separate occasions between 2001 and 2008. The Home Office said a number of “administrative errors” led to police chiefs not getting the proper authorisation to carry out searches. The Act allows officers to stop and search people without having any “reasonable suspicion” they are about to or intend to commit an act of terrorism.

The errors involve paperwork. Someone didn’t sign something or fill in the right bit. The errors came to light after the Metropolitan Police had to dig around its archive thanks to a Freedom of Information request.

If you define terrorism as the systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve a goal, then you can make that definition fit police actions whenever they invoke Section 44. The European Court of Human Rights ruled the blanket use of Section 44 across London was unlawful. The law is too loose and open to abuse.

Home Office admission to the illegality of stops and searches under Section 44 does not mean a government admission to the illegality and inhumanity of that very act. Messing up on an administrative level only means that police forces around the country will tighten up their bookkeeping. It does not mean they will cease stopping and searching members of the public they arbitrarily deem a threat to the status quo.

It doesn’t take guts to question what a police officer is doing to you once he invokes Section 44. It takes knowledge.
So what can you do?

• You do not have to give your name and address or explain why you are where you are. You can’t run off, but you can go limp and stay silent.
• Police can only give you a pat down, remove your outer clothes, search your bags and have you empty your pockets. Women cannot be touched by male police.
• Police cannot take your DNA, nor do you have to agree to be photographed or recorded.
• Take notes about the officers searching you — name, number, police force — and the time and events before the search.
• Remember the wording used by police to explain their search and ask them why they are searching you.
• Always get a receipt. And speak to a good lawyer.

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This article was first published in the Index on Censorship.

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