Latest News
Clarification regarding story on foreign criminals
12 October 2012
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.
We are, for example, concerned that specifically targeting foreign criminals could result in the use of ethnic profiling, which is illegal in the UK, and could lead to a lack of rigour and substantial consideration of evidence in policing. In addition 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 - a point by us which is quoted further down in the piece, taken from our full comment to Exaro.
Our Research and Policy Analyst Kam Gill, who is quoted in the article, clarifies our position in more detail on our blog.
