Where an officer suspects a person is, has been or is about to be involved in unlawful activity, or where they are seeking information about a person’s whereabouts and intentions, they may first stop the person and ask some questions so that the person has an opportunity to account for themselves. This is the nature of effective community policing and highlights our tradition of policing by public consent. Police officers meet, speak with and informally advise members of the public thousands of times every day. The primary purpose of stop and search powers is to enable officers to allay or confirm suspicions about individuals without exercising their power of arrest. These other encounters are referenced in Code A due to the potential for disproportionate use, but are not subject to the same detailed obligations as stop and search. Other police-initiated encounters that are not dependent on a legal power (conversational encounters or stop and account) may also be seen by the public as falling under the same general label as ‘stop and search’. The APP includes these powers in response to Recommendation 6 from Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) in its 2015 report, Stop and search powers 2: are the police using them effectively and fairly? Encounters under these powers give rise to the same considerations of fairness and effectiveness as stop and search powers. The legal differences may not always be obvious to members of the public experiencing such encounters, and they may still associate the encounter with having been stopped and searched. The powers under section 163 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 to stop motor vehicles, and under the Police Reform Act 2002 for police community support officers (PCSOs) to search for and seize alcohol and tobacco from young people, are not stop and search powers and are not currently incorporated into Code A. Stop and search powers under the Terrorism Act 2000 – for example, section 43 and section 47a of that Act – have their own code of practice and are not covered in this APP. This APP deals with the powers governed by Code A of PACE. Search after arrest under section 32 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) is not a stop and search power and therefore not included in this APP. The one thing the powers all have in common is that they allow officers to detain a person who is not under arrest in order to search them or their vehicle for an unlawful item. Most, but not all, of these powers require an officer to have reasonable grounds for suspicion that an unlawful item is being carried. The police have a range of statutory powers of stop and search available to them, depending on the circumstances.
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