.An MP has called for a “system change” after she was stopped by police while travelling in a car in east London.

Former shadow equalities minister Dawn Butler accused the Met Police of racial profiling after the stop on Sunday.

Labour MP Ms Butler told BBC Breakfast she had agreed to meet local police commanders to discuss “taking the bias out of the system”.

The Met said the stop was a mistake caused by an officer incorrectly entering the car’s registration number.

Ms Butler said it had been 20 years since the Macpherson report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence, which described the Met Police as “institutionally racist”.

“It’s about time we changed the system so it works for everyone and it’s effective,” she said.

The MP said institutional racism was “not about saying every single police officer is racist”.

“If you see black people in a car and you automatically assume that they are criminals there is a problem there,” she said.

“That’s why you have to address the system that is currently biased against black people.”

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the police should treat people with “fairness and equality”.

He said: “The police have made a statement saying that they made a mistake.

“They have spoken to the occupants of the car but it’s obviously very, very important that the Met continue to do everything that they can – as indeed they do – to show that they are serving every part of our country, every part of our community, with fairness and equality.”

Butler said the BMW that was stopped on Sunday was being driven by a male friend, who is also black, and it was pulled over by two police cars.

She said officers said the car was registered in North Yorkshire and took the keys while checking the registration.

They then admitted there had been a mistake, that it was registered to the driver and apologised, she said.

Ms Butler told the BBC: “I still don’t know why they punched the number plate into the system.

“I don’t know what raised their suspicion. All I know is I’m black, my friend was black and he has a fairly decent car.”

a statement the Met said “one of the occupants” had been contacted by a senior officer and they had discussed “subsequent interaction as well as feedback regarding the stop”.

It added: “We would welcome the opportunity to discuss this matter further with the occupants if they wish to do so.”

The force’s statement did not explain why the car registration was entered in the first place.

Susan Hall, Conservative leader on the London Assembly, has called for the Met Police Commissioner to release body worn camera footage from officers at the incident.

Ms Hall tweeted : “If Dawn Butler wants to play politics with police officers doing their job, Londoners should have all the facts.”

‘Listening to concerns’

Ms Butler said she had already spoken to her local borough commander and further meetings were planned.

The MP also said stop and search needed to be revised to a system with “better outcomes”, but “it’s going to take an intense amount of work”.

Ch Supt Roy Smith tweeted on Sunday to say he had spoken to Ms Butler and she had given “a very balanced account of the incident”.

The officer said the force “are listening” to concerns she had about the stop and the officers involved.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct is investigating whether officers in England and Wales racially discriminate against ethnic minority people.

The latest official statistics for stop and search showed a disparity rate of 4.3 for all black, Asian and minority ethnic people and 9.7 for black people.

Police have the power to stop and search anyone, including stopping vehicles, if an officer has reasonable grounds to believe someone has been involved in a crime or is in possession of a prohibited item.

BBC analysis shows that from August 2019 to July 2020 there were 101 stop and searches for every 1,000 black people in London, compared to 23.2 for every 1,000 white people and 28.7 per 1,000 Asian people.

Source: BBC

Manhattan prosecutors on Monday asked a federal judge to dismiss President Donald Trump’s lawsuit challenging a subpoena for his financial records, emphasizing that their investigation extends beyond hush-money payments and pointing to public reports of “extensive and protracted criminal conduct” at the Trump Organization.

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s lawyers have previously said the probe is expansive, and on Monday they pointed out that when the subpoena was issued, “there were public allegations of possible criminal activity at Plaintiff’s New York County-based Trump Organization dating back over a decade.”

Last week, lawyers for Trump filed an amended complaint seeking to block the state grand jury subpoena to Trump’s long-time accountant Mazars USA for eight years of personal and business records by arguing the subpoena was “wildly overbroad” and issued in bad faith.

Trump’s latest legal challenge comes after the US Supreme Court ruled last month that the President does not have broad immunity from a state grand jury subpoena.

In a court filing Monday, lawyers for Vance wrote: “This ‘new’ filing contains nothing new whatsoever, and Plaintiff has utterly failed to make a ‘stronger showing of bad faith than he previously made to this Court.”

The district attorney’s office added that Trump’s lawyers are relying on a false assumption that the investigation is limited to hush-money payments made to two women during the 2016 presidential campaign who alleged affairs with Trump. Trump has denied the affairs.

“Plaintiff’s argument that the Mazars Subpoena is overbroad fails for the additional reason that it rests on the false premise that the grand jury’s investigation is limited to so-called ‘hush-money’ payments made by Michael Cohen on behalf of Plaintiff in 2016,” the district attorney’s office said.

CNN has previously reported that Vance is investigating other transactions that go beyond the hush-money payments.

On Monday, they told the court that given public reports “of these public reports of possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization, there was nothing facially improper (or even particularly unusual) about the Mazars Subpoena, which issued in connection with a complex financial investigation, requesting eight years of records from an accounting firm.”

In 2019, Vance’s office described the scope of its investigation in court filings, but redacted several paragraphs over three pages. That filing openly described the hush money investigation because it was already public. US District Judge Victor Marrero privately viewed the unredacted information and found the subpoena was not overly broad.

Last year, ProPublica revealed discrepancies about the information the Trump Organization told tax authorities and lenders about its business. Vance’s office is looking into those allegations, according to people familiar with the matter.

Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, told Congress in 2018 that he believed Trump artificially inflated the value of some of his assets in dealings with insurers and banks. Cohen offered only three internal financial documents as his proof, but no other documents to bolster his claims.

The district attorney’s office interviewed Cohen as part of its Trump investigation at least three times last year, CNN has previously reported. People familiar with the inquiry say Cohen was asked about the range of allegations he has made against the President.

Source: CNN

The US military said Sunday it has called off a search for seven Marines and a sailor missing at sea for days, saying they were presumed dead.

The military personnel were aboard an amphibious vehicle that sank Thursday in deep water off the coast of California during a training exercise.

“It is with a heavy heart that I decided to conclude the search and rescue effort,” said Colonel Christopher Bronzi, commander of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

During the 40-hour search, Marine, Navy and Coast Guard helicopters, ships, and watercraft searched more than 1,000 square nautical miles, the Marines said in a statement.

A total of 16 service members were on the amphibious vehicle — until now eight were rescued but one later died, and two others are in critical condition.

The search and rescue operation now shifts to one aimed at finding the bodies of the missing service members, Bronzi said.

Source: AFP

The US Republican Party’s vote to nominate its presidential candidate this month will be held in private, without press in attendance.

A Republican National Convention spokeswoman gave coronavirus health guidelines as the reason, the Associated Press reports.

Delegates are due to gather in North Carolina to formally renominate President Donald Trump.

The 336 delegates will meet on 24 August in the city of Charlotte.

They will cast proxy votes for some 2,500 official delegates. Mr Trump is the party’s sole remaining nominee, and his renomination will officially launch his re-election bid.

The party was “working within the parameters set before us by state and local guidelines regarding the number of people who can attend events” , the spokeswoman said.

The decision marks a significant change for the convention, which historically has worked to draw media attention to spread party messaging to the public.

Mr Trump had switched the location of the convention to Jacksonville, Florida, after the Democratic governor of North Carolina insisted in May on limiting the crowd size at the convention, on the grounds of social distancing.

But Mr Trump later scrapped the Florida convention , blaming the state’s coronavirus “flare-up”.

Source: BBC