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The woman tasked with holding the police to account over “stop and search” has told London’s most senior officer she was “alarmed” at the number of apparently unjustified searches in Islington.

Speaking at a public event with Met Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe on Friday, Katrina Ffrench, the new chairwoman of the Islington Stop and Search Monitoring Group, questioned whether officers are being properly trained to carry out searches.

She said: “One has to ask whether officers are being trained appropriately and making the best use of police resources in identifying those who are carrying weapons and illegal substances, because I am alarmed that last month we had 898 stops and, out of that, 614 people were ‘no further actions’ [meaning no evidence of criminality had been found, and no further action was taken against the individual searched].

“That’s a 16 per cent arrest rate – lower than the 20 per cent you’re aiming for, if I’m not mistaken.”

Police have a range of powers at their disposal to stop and search individuals, including suspicion of a drugs offence or that an individual may be carrying a weapon. But the tactic has been a controversial one for decades, particularly within ethnic minority communities.

Figures obtained by the monitoring group show that, during March, there were 687 stop and searches in Islington, 479 of which led to nothing.

Ms Ffrench, who works for Islington Council, told Sir Bernard: “In order for the public to have confidence we need to be sure that the police are using their powers appropriately.”

In reply, Sir Bernard insisted that London’s police “hit-rate” had improved in recent years.

“Over the last few years we have reduced stop and search in London by about 70 per cent,” he said.

“That’s a lot. On the whole, when we were doing so many, our general hit list was about 7 per cent.

“[Looking at] your numbers, about one third were successful. But it still means that in quite a lot of the events someone was arrested, where we had evidence to substantiate the stop and an arrest was made. At the moment, across London, around one in five of the stops are now currently valid. Compare that to the rest of the country, that is far better than anywhere.

“We have increased stop-and-searches over the past six months because we saw knife crime going up. It’s not a perfect science but I think it works far better.

“We’re always trying to get it towards a hundred per cent and so we do a lot of training to make sure that officers are best stop-searchers and have a high hit rate.”

Speaking after the meeting, Ms Ffrench said she was concerned young people in parts of Islington feel they are being unfairly targeted through stop and search.

“The knife [recovery] numbers are not going up, and that’s the thing that’s killing people,” she added. “It’s about how young people feel, [some] develop distrust from the police because they feel they’re being targeted.

“A frank discussion has to be had around how we engage with the police and they with people. If they [young people] feel they don’t trust the police, they won’t report crime. There’s two sides to the coin.”