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Alice Roberti: Police use of Tasers has been steadily increasing for the past few years, and the FOI responses reflect this, but we were shocked to see it being deployed against so many minors – very young children in particular.What are you hoping to come of the report submitted to the UN?
Ahead of the UN Committee on the Convention of Rights of the Child questioning the government, we aim to draw their attention to the wide-ranging misuse of police powers against children. Not only do we believe that the use of stop-and-search, strip search and Tasers risk violating a number of international human rights standards, it is significant that the Defence Scientific Advisory Council – the UK government's own advisors – have warned of children being at greater risk of internal injury from Tasers than adults. And official police watchdog Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary has raised grave concerns about current stop-and-search and strip search practices.What do you hope is done about this?
We would like to see the government take concrete steps to safeguard children coming into contact with police through such encounters and minimise the humiliation and trauma they can bring. We want to see the threshold raised that allows stop-and-search and strip search to be carried out on young children, to have greater monitoring and scrutiny in how these intrusive powers are being used, and see specific guidance be produced on the use of Tasers against children that prohibits them being fired on children 14 years or younger.
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Besides being fired, which incapacitates a child through an electric shock, Tasers can be deployed by other means such as "drive stun" mode. This involves the Taser being held against the body and the trigger pulled without probes being fired, purely so as to inflict pain. Of course a Taser doesn't need to electrocute a child to do them harm. We are also concerned about the psychological impact that seemingly less severe categories could have; having a Taser gun aimed at a child, or having that red dot identify them as a target, is likely to cause them severe distress.In terms of Stop Watch's other work, street-based stop-and-search has fallen since the riots, is that right?
In terms of the total numbers of stop-and-searches, and [racial] disproportionality, those numbers have come down, which is to be welcomed. But we have seen this before – it seems to happen every few years, that you'll get this quite dramatic drop, after a lot of pressure has been put on the police, and then it steadily creeps back up again, and it takes something like the riots, or the Macpherson Inquiry, to curb it again. It's just a cycle really. What we haven't seen any movement on is the focus on drugs rather than on violence. If anything when looking at the total number of stops and searches, the proportion targeting drugs – primarily small amounts of cannabis for personal use – is increasing.
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