A recent piece by ITV News reported the Met Police’s increased use of stop and search led to a record find rate for the month of July, with little scrutiny of the figures, essentially taking their results at face value.
The Met police are yet to provide the full data to support their press statement, which claims that they are on course to carry out 20% more stop and searches compared with the previous year but have only achieved this ‘highest find rate’ in the last month. It seems a very long time to achieve very little.
The Met police stated that “in July, more than a third (36%) of stop and searches resulted in officers finding weapons, drugs or other evidence of offending, the highest find rate ever recorded by the Met”. This information was essentially regurgitated by ITV with no critique or investigation of the figures given by the Met.
Here ITV stated that 36% of searches in July 2026 resulted in uncovering evidence of criminal activity. The wording used by both the police and ITV to describe these figures raises a number of questions: What do they mean by ‘highest find rate’? What are they referring to when 'uncovering evidence of criminal activity' and 'other evidence of offending'? The use of such subjective language creates uncertainty around the findings of a stop and search – especially to the unqualified eye – and may lead members of the public to interpret these statements based on their own opinions and biases.
Undoubtedly, there is a duty on the police to provide qualified guidance to readers on such matters. The importance of providing clarification surrounding statements made by the police – inevitably parroted by the media – is seen in the Met’s own data. Figures released by the Met in 2023, indicate that in that year, of the 4,650 weapons seized through stop and search, only 56 related to zombie knives while the highest category at 1,705 relating to 'various other pointed and bladed articles'. These figures alone highlight the importance of providing a clear breakdown of data when issuing statements such as those seen in the recent Met press release.
The Met’s original press release states that the increase in stop-searches – often associated with lower detection rates – has now instead found evidence of criminality more frequently. The Met provide no elaboration on what this evidence of criminality is. The lack of clarification surrounding this wording is a dangerous move by both the police and ITV in shaping the public's perception of the effectiveness of stop and search. It would be unsurprising if the average reader were to draw inferences from such broad statements with respect to stop and search. Such ambiguity perpetuates ideas around what this ‘evidence of criminality’ is without actually clarifying it. This effectiveness of stop and search perpetuated by the Met can be challenged from the Met's own data on stop and searches between January and May 2026, where we see 66.44% of stop and searches being marked as no further action, alongside non-arrest outcomes such as community resolutions at 11.02% and penalty notices at 2.29%.
The assistant commissioner Ade Adelekan stated the Met were aware of 'concerns around disproportionality' and that they were addressing this through greater 'transparency'. It is difficult to see how this is actually being applied in practice when the Met releases broad statements and unclassified statistics surrounding the so-called success of their increased stop and search agenda.
The deputy mayor for policing, Kaya Comer-Schwartz, is quoted in the press release claiming that: 'Stop and search is a key policing tool. Done well, it stops those intent on causing harm and fear in our communities and takes thousands of dangerous weapons and drugs off our streets'. Once again we see these broad sweeping statements without any clear supporting data for the period in question which accurately mirror the statement. There is a responsibility on the police, the media and the government to provide accurate and unambiguous information. While data released by the Met police on their stop and searches between January and May 2026 show that the most common reason for a stop and search was for controlled drugs at 58.79%, the second most common reason was for stolen goods at 21.14%. This places searches for stolen goods during this period almost 7 percentage points higher than searches for offensive weapons (14.53%).
The Met police continue to push the narrative of removing dangerous weapons from the street through stop and search without providing a clear breakdown of the results of this tactic. While there is still a significant amount of stop-searches relating to controlled drugs, the Met fail to provide any clarification on what drugs this relates to and whether these instances are actually targeting large distributors of controlled drugs within communities.
There is a responsibility on the Met police to provide an accurate breakdown of the figures when publishing such sweeping statements as those seen in their recent press release. Both the Met and the media have a duty to avoid providing misleading information to the public when reporting on tactics such as stop and search, and avoid moving into a dangerous area of presenting such data in a way which uncritically favours the Met.
By Ruth Dillon, StopWatch volunteer
All blogposts are published with the permission of the author. The views expressed are solely the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of StopWatch UK