Mrs Lawrence: Ethnic youths still more likely to be searched

DOREEN LAWRENCE, the mother of murdered black teenager Stephen, today warned that society risks becoming complacent in the fight against racism.

On the 10th anniversary of the Macpherson report into her son's murder, she criticised police for continuing disproportionate stop and searches of black people.

She said she had worked closely with police over the past 10 years to implement many of the report's recommendations and had been encouraged by their response in some areas.

But she said: "We are in danger of being complacent by lingering over the successes and forgetting the obstacles that we still need to overcome."

She said the Macpherson inquiry had vindicated the family's belief that police racism and incompetence was at the root of the investigation's failure.

She said: "What saddens me today is that, 15 years after the death of Stephen, there has been no long-term decrease in stop and search of black people. Black people are seven times more likely to be stopped. That is not progress."

She questioned whether today's officers would react differently from those who encountered her son in 1993 after he had been stabbed by a racist gang at a bus stop in Eltham.

She said: "Would they see a guilty black man or would they see a young person bleeding on London's streets?"

At the same conference in Westminster, Justice Minister Jack Straw repeated his recent declaration that he did not believe the police service was still "institutionally racist" — the charge levelled in the Macpherson report.

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