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Greatest danger facing young black men is not the police but gang violence, Trevor Phillips warns

Trevor Phillips
Trevor Phillips

The “greatest danger” to young black men is gangs not the police, Trevor Phillips has claimed, as he urged people not to compare Britain’s problems to the racial tensions erupting across America.

Speaking in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, the former chairman of Britain's equalities watchdog warned that hundreds of youngsters were dying every year due to gang-related crime.

Appearing on the latest episode of The Telegraph’s Planet Normal podcast, Mr Phillips said there was “clearly a problem” with the Government’s stop and search policy.

Discussing his own experiences, the 66-year-old said it was “absurd” that as a man in his forties he had been pulled over whilst driving, describing it as “humiliating and ridiculous”.

He added there was a need to address perceptions that “people of colour, particularly black men, are more likely to be stopped and likely to be stopped in a way that is not courteous, that is not founded in some proper crime fighting activity.”

It comes amid an ongoing row over the treatment of two British athletes who were recently stopped and handcuffed by police officers close to their home in west London.

Their trainer, Linford Christie, Britain’s most successful Olympic sprinter, said the incident showed that “racist police aren’t just in America.”

However, cautioning against comparisons with police brutality in the US, Mr Phillips argued that black people in the UK are “not as separated” and the UK had the highest proportion of “black-white mixed race children anywhere in the world.”

Asked whether he agreed with Kevin Hurley, a former Scotland Yard chief, who recently said that stop and search was primarily aimed at preventing “black-on-black” crime, Mr Phillips added: “There is absolutely no doubt that if you are thinking about what is the greatest danger today to a young black man in the capital, the answer is not the police, it’s somebody else in a gang.

“That person is very likely to be a person of colour. While we have to get the police to do the right thing and behave in the right way, let us not forget that young black men are dying in hundreds every year.

“Never mind the ones that are being injured and maimed.”

He also took a thinly-veiled swipe at some media outlets over the Black Lives Matter protests, arguing that some of the coverage was why it was “really difficult” for people to discuss controversial issues on race.

“The reason it is so difficult for anybody to talk about [black on black crime] is because the media is dominated by white people, and particularly by a white liberal consciousness that is consumed by guilt,” he added.

“Almost anything to do with black people must involve them – reporters, editors – showing us how much they care about black people. It just astonishes me.”

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