Recommendation, Stop and search, Brent - Metropolitan Police, June 2018

Shortly before midnight on 28 June 2018 officers from the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) carried out a stop and search on the driver of a vehicle that was parked in a residential area of Brent, north west London.

Footage from the officers’ body worn video show the officers approached the man to determine whether the car was registered to him and if he was insured.

An officer then informed the man he would be searched for weapons and he was placed in handcuffs while both he and his car were searched. The man was then moved to the police van for a more thorough search of his shoes and trousers to be carried out. The officers did not find any weapons and removed the man from handcuffs at 12.12am.

During our investigation we reviewed body worn video footage from six officers, the paperwork the officers completed after the incident, the briefing the officers were tasked with prior to patrols that evening plus the previous year’s stop and search records of the principal officer. Two officers were interviewed under misconduct caution, the police constable who initiated the stop and search, and an acting Inspector. Witness statements were also obtained from the other officers who were present.

We concluded our investigation in December 2019 when we shared our report and its findings with the Metropolitan Police Service. We agreed both officers should undertake practice requiring improvement after the investigation highlighted concerns about the strength of the grounds for the stop and search and the communication with the driver about this. Concerns were also raised that assumptions may have been made about the driver that led to officers becoming suspicious about him and his race could not be ruled out as a contributing factor for this. It was agreed both officers should undergo the formal reflective practice review process to learn from this incident.

Both officers were also placed on a mentoring programme operated by a Chief Inspector tasked by the MPS with finding ways to improve the stop and search experience for BAME people. The mentoring programme will cover unconscious bias and disproportionality as well as the issues affecting stop and search. We also recommended that all officers present during this incident attend unconscious bias training.

An officer reflecting on their actions is a formal process reflected in legislation. The reflective practice review process consists of a fact-finding stage and a discussion stage, followed by the production of a reflective review development report. The discussion must include, in particular:

• a discussion of the practice requiring improvement and related circumstances that have been identified, and
• the identification of key lessons to be learnt by the participating officer, line management or police force concerned, to address the matter and prevent a reoccurrence of the matter.

Additionally, our investigation identified learning from this investigation which is being expanded as part of a wider piece of work the IOPC is doing having studied five stop and search cases which occurred in the MPS. Presently we are consulting extensively with internal and external stakeholders regarding the identified learning and we will provide further details in due course.

In 2022, the investigation was considered as part of a wider piece of work we did to study stop and search cases nationally.