Why Keith doesn't call York his home

THE FIRST time Keith Hardy was arrested was shortly after his 18th birthday. The black teenager, who'd lived in York with his white adoptive parents since the age of three, had gone out clubbing with some white friends.

He and a friend had come out of what was then Silks nightclub on Clifford Street and were waiting among the crowds outside for some more friends who were still inside.

The pair were larking about and 'scuffling around' with each other when a police van drew up.

"We stopped as soon as we saw them come up," says Keith, now aged 24. "We realised what they may think. We told them it was all right, there was no trouble."

The officers told them to 'clear off', Keith recalls. He and his friend both said they couldn't leave because they were waiting for some friends still inside the club. The officers insisted they had to go - and Keith protested. "I said 'We've not done anything wrong'," he recalls.

"As soon as I said that, I got arrested for a public order offence and taken to the police station. I was kept there for about five hours. Then I was let go and put on bail, but before it came to court they dropped the charges."

Keith says his white friend, who had also protested, was not arrested. It was a foretaste of what was to come. Over the next few years, Keith says, he was stopped and required to produce his documents at the police station 76 times - mainly when he was in his or his parents' car, but sometimes when on foot as well.

He was breath-tested ten times and he and his car were often searched by officers who found nothing, he says.

There were also occasions when he was on foot, he says, when police would slow their van to a crawl beside him while he was walking along, before driving off. He also claims he was called a 'black bastard' by one officer and had obscene gestures made to him by others on several occasions.

Eventually in 1998, he decided he'd had enough and moved to Leicester - a much bigger and more culturally mixed city.

"I would love to still be able to live in York," he says, "but I can't. Leicester is a pretty good place. I've been here over two years now and never had a problem. It's quite shocking how I can get about my business now without getting interfered with."

Keith spoke out after his adoptive mother Marta contacted the Evening Press after our report last week on North Yorkshire Police stop and search figures, which revealed that ethnic minorities appear to be nearly four times as likely to be stopped and searched by police as white people.

Mrs Hardy says she was particularly incensed by the comment from a police spokesman that the statistics did not reveal anything 'deeply meaningful' and that people were 'stopped and searched for excellent reasons'.

"Unless further statistics can be supplied showing that there are at least four times as many convictions amongst the ethnic minority population than the white, the North Yorkshire Police stand condemned of racism," she says.

The police make no attempt to deny Keith's story. While they cannot confirm the number of times he was stopped and searched, they do accept there is 'some justification' to his complaints that it happened repeatedly.

They do point out that Keith's complaints were made some years ago (they mainly relate to incidents between 1997 and 1998) and that they were investigated by a senior officer who has since retired.

Since then, they insist, police in York have been learning the lessons of the past. "There have been changes since that time, particularly since we introduced our Disc (Diversity Incorporating Safer Communities) initiative," a police spokesman said. "The force has gone on and developed since then and I would not expect that to be repeated today."

It is true that in recent years the police in York have made real efforts to crack down on institutional racism. A new strategy was launched in September last year when a task force made up of York police officers, City of York Council, the York Racial Equality Network and other agencies was set up to ensure that all reported crimes where race is an issue were given special attention.

But the publication of the North Yorkshire Police Authority audit committee's own figures last week shows there is still much to be done.

The figures show that between April and September 2000, 68 ethnic minority people were stopped and searched out of an ethnic population in the county of 5,088 - that's 33.4 people for every 1,000. Among white people, 3,445 were stopped, out of a white population of 737, 312 - or just 8.8 per 1,000, proportionately about one quarter as many.

The police point out, however, that because of the tiny proportion of people from ethnic minority backgrounds in the county, it only takes a handful of arrests to push up the figures. "It only needs one incident where you're carrying out an operation to find a suspect described as black and you will skew the figures," a police spokesman said.

Liz Sibthorpe, chairman of York Racial Equality Network, said they were working closely with the police in York who were showing good faith in tackling the race issue. "But York has still got a long way to go, as have other parts of the country, before situations like this are fully addressed," she said.

Marta and Simon Hardy, Keith's adoptive parents, don't need reminding about that. The couple, from Heworth Green, are still bitter at the way their son was treated.

They accept that after they spoke to the local police commander Keith was stopped less often - but say the harassment did not stop completely.

It was Simon who began to record the frequency with which his son was stopped, where it happened, the attitude of the officers involved and whether they had called him names.

The Hardys are under no illusions that Keith's colour was the motivating factor.

"We always knew he wouldn't have been stopped if he was white," says Mrs Hardy.

"Other young men his age weren't being stopped and we knew he stood out because of his colour."

Mrs Hardy says she and her husband, Simon, realised when they adopted Keith that there may be some problems bringing up a black child in York.

"We knew there was racism in York but we didn't think it would be a huge problem," she says.

"It should not take too much imagination on the part of the overwhelmingly white citizenry of York, including its police force, to have some idea of what it does to a young man, by nature and training caring and law-abiding, to be stopped and 'sussed' over and again.

"We never should have brought him up in York. He left completely disillusioned and disgusted with the North Yorkshire police and he left parents with bitterness in their hearts."