New crackdown on middle class drug users- plus more stop and search

A police purge on recreational drug users whose habits fuel violent offending and more stop and search were announced on Tuesday as Boris Johnson and Priti Patel unveiled a controversial new plan for cutting crime.

The new “test on arrest” crackdown follows warnings from Scotland Yard that a battle for the custom of middle class cocaine users is causing gang conflict and stabbings in the capital.

It came as the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary said they wanted to “prevent more families from losing their children to mindless stabbings”, make the streets safer for women, and reduce burglaries as they set out a range of measures to deter, detect and reform criminals.

The most high-profile changes include making it easier for police to conduct random “Section 60” stop and search checks to find weapons by making permanent an earlier relaxation of controls on the power.

Burglars will be forced to wear GPS tags after their release to deter to make it easier for officers to catch them if they commit new offences.

The government said there would also be “highly-targeted, analytically-driven policing operations in the highest crime hotspots... with visible patrols to suppress criminal behaviour”, plus league tables setting out how police respond to 999 and 101 calls.

Another focus will be investment in early intervention with young people to address causes of offending such as mental health problems.

Unveiling the plans on Tuesday during a visit to Surrey Police’s headquarters, Mr Johnson said the aim was to “make communities safer” by reducing crime.

“Our plan includes action to take more knives off the street and a named, contactable police officer for every neighbourhood who can grip persistent issues and antisocial behaviour,” he said. “This builds on our progress we’ve made recruiting almost 9,000 more police officers, nearly half way to meeting our election promise of 20,000 new officers and we are backing them with the powers that they need to cut crime.”

In a linked announcement, Ms Patel warned recreational drug takers, such as middle class cocaine users, would also be targeted in recognition of the police and Home Office belief that their activities are a major contributor to gang conflict and violent crime.

Warning of increased use of “drug testing on arrest” in a document explaining the policy, the Home Office said the aim would be to “crack down on recreational drug use and ensure those who break the law face consequences.”

It added this would be “the first step in work to challenge drug misuse, reduce demand and change the perceived acceptability of using illicit drugs which devastate communities and fuel serious violence.”

Critics responded sceptically to the government’s announcements with Labour accusing ministers of promoting “rehashed policies” that “won’t make our streets safer” and the Liberal Democrat peer and former police officer Lord Paddick condemning the stop and search plans as an “outrageous move that flies in the face of evidence.”

He warned the existing use of Section 60 random stop and search had failed to prevent the recent surge in fatal teenage stabbings and that any expansion of its deployment would affect young Black Londoners most.

Policing minister Kit Malthouse, a former London deputy mayor for policing, rebuffed the criticisms, however, and insisted that stop and search saved lives by removing weapons from the street.

"When people challenge me on stop and search, I often say ‘well okay, if we can’t do stop and search what else should we do?’ But it has to be something that we can do tonight because we know those people with knives in their pockets, going to injure and kill, are out there tonight,” he told Sky News.

"We know, certainly from my time in City Hall back between 2008 and 2012 when we were dealing with a similar knife crime pandemic, that appropriately used with respect stop and search can have a big impact on getting knives off the streets.

“It’s not the long-term solution, but in the short term it can have a big impact on suppressing knife crime.”

He added: "What we are trying to promote in our policing plan today, is that we want to prevent crime, we want fewer victims, we want fewer knives on the street, and if we can signal to those people who would go out and perpetrate crime that they shouldn’t, that they should do something else - don’t carry a knife, don’t go and be a burglar, find something else to do so that those numbers drop - that’s exactly what we are aiming for."

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