Stop and Account

I was stopped and asked to account for my actions by a police officer last year. During that encounter with the police I feel that I was misled by the officer who suggested that I had to give him my name and address. Police stopping people, asking them to account for their actions and then filling in a stop/encounter form appears to me to be a really common way for people to come into contact with the police, so I think that ensuring that the process is properly handled is critical to maintaining a positive impression of the police in the eyes of the public.

While I appreciate that in an ideal situation police officers would behave properly and not misrepresent their powers to demand names and addresses I feel that in the case of “Stop and Account” it would be appropriate to give officers guidance on the language they should use when asking the questions required by the form.

I would suggest wording such as:

“You don’t have to give me your name and address, but if you would like to provide it I will write it on this form, which I will give you a copy of”.

I hope you can see how this is quite different from the language used when I was stopped which was:

“Now I have stopped you and asked you to account for your actions we MUST fill in this form”.

How the questions are asked might well affect other answers too, for example the policeman asked if I: “would describe myself as a white British male”. To ensure that the “self-defined” ethnicity recording is effective and accurate I feel it would be desirable to suggest the police do not prompt the person they have stopped for a particular answer it almost defies the point of the question.

I have a number of questions about the Stop and Account procedure, the answers to which I believe ought to be easily accessible by the public:

  • Are all stop and account and stop – search incidents entered into a database? PS 1258 Jason Wragg told Cambridge Council’s North area Committee on the 20/09/2007 the answer to this was: “Yes”.
  • What is the database used for? Is it just used to monitor stops and stop – searches, or is this information correlated with other data on areas and individuals?
  • How long does a record of an individual’s encounter / stop search remain on the database?
  • Is an individual’s explanation for their actions recorded on the database? (It is not included on the encounter record given to people who have been stopped and asked to account for their actions.).
  • Is a record of an encounter / stop search / stop check in Cambridgeshire entered on to the Police National Computer or otherwise accessible by police nationwide?

I would like to a person’s explanation for their actions recorded on the encounter record they are given; this would give some assurance that it has been recorded properly by the police.

I have sent these comments to Kevin Wilkins (County Councillor and Police Authority member with a specialisation in Cambridge City) and Olive Main, Independent Member of the Police Authority.

Update: On Tuesday the 29th of January 2008 I attended a local meeting with the Police in the Meadows Community Centre, Arbury, Cambridge there Stop and Account took up about half the two hour discussion, its operation was still causing major problems in North Cambridge. Neither Olive Main or Kevin Wilkins have replied to me.


6 responses to “Stop and Account”

  1. I am the chairman of a Stop and search Monitoring group. I found your article tremendously helpful.
    I would like confirmed whether or not a person who encounters one ot these stop and account can walk away from the police, as it has no legal standing?

  2. A couple of years after this experience I was again asked to given my name and address by a police officer, again in circumstances where I didn’t have to provide it. I declined asking if there was any basis for them to require me to provide it and their response was “that’s suspicious” and they said they might carry out investigations to find it out.

    I suspect there’s a note of this somewhere on my website, but I can’t find it. The context was police conducting door-to-door enquiries in relation to a crime. I’d said I didn’t know anything about what they were investigating and they requested my name and address “so we know we’ve spoken to you”.

    This kind of reaction to declining to give a name and address is not unique:

    http://www.rtaylor.co.uk/police-stopping-people-taking-photographs-in-public-places.html#comment-14398

  3. In the House of Commons on the 2nd of July 2013 Cambridge MP Julian Huppert asked the Home Secretary:

    Would she agree with me that when the police do ask people for information such as name and address they should make it clear whether or not the request is a requirement or it’s purely voluntary?

    Home Secretary Theresa May’s reply to this was:

    On the matters of what information needs to be recorded and what information will need to be available under any changes which are made to the guidance and so-forth I can assure my honorable friend that we will make absolutely clear where information is required and where it is voluntary.

    I think this is an excellent step which will go a long way to improving the interaction between the police and members of the public who they stop.

  4. An update to the PACE codes now before Parliament states, in relation to Stop and Search:

    4.3A For the purposes of completing the search record, there is no requirement to record the name, address and date of birth of the person searched or the person in charge of a vehicle which is searched. The person is under no obligation to provide this information and they should not be asked to provide it for the purpose of completing the record.

    [There is no longer a national requirement to record an encounter]

    I think this is excellent. More information is available at:
    http://www.rtaylor.co.uk/police-stop-search-consultation.html#comment-108062

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