A black man says he felt forced to leave York after being pulled over by police more than 70 times in two years.

Keith Hardy, 24, has since moved from York to the Midlands to escape what he claims is racism among some officers in the city.

He said that while on average he was pulled over once a week by police between 1997-1998, he was at one time being stopped four or five times a week.

"I just became resigned to it," he said. "My white friends couldn't believe what was happening - most of them had never been stopped by the police."

North Yorkshire Police today said there was "some justification" to Mr Hardy's complaints about the repeated stops, but that once it was brought to a senior officer's attention, they had stopped.

Mr Hardy said his run-ins with the police started soon after his 18th birthday, when he was arrested outside a York nightclub.

While the white friend with whom he was "horsing around" was not arrested, he was bundled into the back of a police van and held for four hours at a police station.

Charges were dropped before the case reached court.

Mr Hardy's white adoptive mother, Marta, contacted the Evening Press following the publication of North Yorkshire police statistics showing that people from ethnic minorities are proportionately four times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people.

For every 1,000 people in the county, 8.8 white people were stopped and searched, compared with 33.4 for non-whites.

Police say the high proportion of non-whites being stopped is partly the result of the county's tiny ethnic minority population.

The actual number of non-white people who were stopped between April and September last year was only 68, compared with 3,445 white people.

But Mrs Hardy was incensed by a police spokesman comment that the statistics did not reveal anything 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 among the ethnic minority population than the white, North Yorkshire Police stand condemned of racism," she said.

Mr Hardy said that following his first arrest, he was ordered to produce his documents at the police station on 76 occasions in 1997 and 1998, and has lost track of the number of times he was pulled over without further action being taken.

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

"They could never justify stopping me because they never found anything - because there was nothing to find," he said.

"It got to the stage where if I went out and saw a police car, I fully expected to be stopped."

Mr Hardy also claims that he was called a "black bastard" by an officer, and had obscene gestures made to him by officers.

In total, he was convicted twice at York Magistrates Court: once for driving without insurance - he was insured but could not produce the document - and once for displaying an expired tax disc.

Superintendent John Lacy, of York police, said: "There was some justification to the complaints.

"These repeated stops were subject to an investigation by a senior police officer who has since retired, but as a result some learning points did arise."

Supt Lacy said there was a potential problem when there were 200 officers in the city whose suspicions could be aroused by cars seen late at night or in crime hot-spots.

A force spokesman insisted today that police had learned lessons. "The force has gone on and developed, and I would not expect (Mr Hardy's experiences) would be repeated today," he said.

Updated: 11:39 Thursday, January 18, 2001