YP Letters: West Yorkshire fingerprint scheme could target ethnic minorities

From: Nadeem Murtuja, Interim Director, JUST Yorkshire.
By The Newsroom
Published 14th Feb 2018, 12:12 BST
Is the mobile fingerprint scanner a breach of civil liberties?Is the mobile fingerprint scanner a breach of civil liberties?
Is the mobile fingerprint scanner a breach of civil liberties?

I AM deeply concerned that the Home Office has quietly chosen to roll out a portable, on the spot fingerprint scanning scheme in West Yorkshire, with little or no debate with the public, or in Parliament (The Yorkshire Post, February 10).

I worry this scheme will deliberately target people 
who are non-white and those people who are perceived to 
be of European descent, checking their status against criminal and immigration databases.

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The people of West Yorkshire have every right to know from Mark Burns-Williamson, the area’s police and crime commissioner, why there 
has been little dialogue about this scheme with the people 
that he serves. Moreover, he needs to assure, and be upfront with people that he has put in place all measures to prevent 
the institutional abuse 
of minorities from this 
scheme.

More fundamentally, he 
needs to ask the Home Office why West Yorkshire in 
particular, has been chosen 
for this pilot – is this racial profiling at a national scale?