POLICE in Greater Manchester carried out more than 10,000 stop and searches last year, according to the latest figures.

Home Office data shows that GMP officers used stop and search powers 11,748 times in the year to March and that black people were 3.9 times more likely to be stopped than white people

Police monitoring organisation StopWatch UK says that this shows the police to be flawed and unfair.

Research and policy manager Habib Kadiri said: "What is exceptional is how racial disparities persisted even during a global pandemic, proving that the police never stopped working tirelessly to over-police people of colour.

"We simply would not accept this of any other emergency service profession.

"The police must do better.”

The figures also showed that just nine per cent of Greater Manchester stop and searches led to an arrest in the same time.

Across England and Wales, the number of stop and searches rose from 577,000 in 2019 to 20 to 704,000 in 2020 to 21.

This means almost 2,000 people were stopped per day on average last year, with figures peaking in mid-May 2020, when there were almost 3,000 searches each day.

But the national arrest rate fell from 13 per cent to 11 per cent, the lowest level since 2012 to 13.

The Home Office claims police used extra officers and resources to tackle drug crime during the coronavirus lockdown, and also removed almost 16,000 dangerous weapons from our streets.

A spokesperson said: "No one should be targeted for stop and search because of their race and there are extensive safeguards in place to prevent this."