The news website Exaro has published a story regarding Operation Terminus - a new elite crime squad that targets foreign criminals in London. Runnymede is quoted as calling the initiative "worrying" and potentially alienating to ethnic minorities.

We are concerned that the headline and start of article may give the false impression we are against foreign criminals being targeted by the police. This is, of course, not the case. We are instead concerned with the overall approach of Operation Terminus rather than its specific aims.

Our Research and Policy Analyst Kam Gill clarifies Runnymede’s position and provides more detail on our concerns with Operation Terminus

The Metropolitan police have recently initiated an operation - dubbed Operation Terminus - which seeks to target foreign criminals for deportation. While few people, and certainly not Runnymede are likely object to criminals of whatever nationality being targeted by the police and prevented from committing more crime there are aspects of the approach which are problematic and are likely to be ineffective.

Firstly by focusing on "foreigners" rather than on "criminals" or on a specific crime there is a risk that the police will slide into the use of ethnic profiling - targeting specific people based not on intelligence that they may be involved in crime but based purely on the actual or perceived ethnicity -  a tactic which is illegal in the UK. Regardless of their ethnicity criminals should be caught, of course, but once caught they should also be entitled to due process and fair treatment under the law.

Secondly, this tactic will potentially prove ineffective and may actually harm policing in the capital. Policing methods such as stop and search, if focused on ethnicity or appearance rather than intelligence and reasonable suspicion tends to lead to a lack of rigour and reduces the likelihood of success while increasing the costs to the police in terms of man hours. More than 2.5 million people living in London were born outside the UK - the idea that "foreigners" constitutes a sufficiently robust and specific category on which to base a successful police operation is simply not credible. London is a hugely diverse city; it deserves and requires policing that is takes account of that.   As we have said elsewhere: the fact that this operation is focusing on the ethnicity of the criminals rather than on the crime gives the impression that it has some political motivation, feeding into an agenda that stigmatises immigrants to the UK. This is likely to undermine trust in the police among minority communities destroying the good relationships that are essential to solving all crime regardless of the ethnicity of the perpetrator.  

Everyone, regardless of the nationality or ethnicity has an interest in policing being effective and fair, elements of Operation Terminus give the impression that it could be neither.