Police officers to record ethnicity data for vehicle stops

ROADS policing officers across London will record the location and time of the vehicle stop, ethnic background, sex and age of the driver, and the make and model of the vehicle. All policing duties will be carried out first, and the data will be recorded at the end of the stop.

The pilot is said to help to review vehicle stops to better understand proportionality relating to ethnicity, and it was first announced as part of the Mayor’s action plan published in November 2020.

Met Operations Commander Kyle Gordon said: “The Met is committed to making London’s roads safer inline the Mayor’s Vision Zero plan. In 2020 we lost 96 people in traffic collisions in London…”

Adding “We want all communities to have the same level of trust in us and for us to be the most trusted police service in the world. Lower levels of trust create challenges to keeping Londoners safe whether it is a reluctance to share information, to report a crime, or to support our work to tackle violence.”