But while sus laws allowed the police to arrest anyone they thought was loitering with intent to commit a crime, the new laws meant police had to have reasonable belief that an offence had already been committed before stopping and searching a suspect.39 While the police line has always been that such tactics prevent crime, black people have always been disproportionately targeted under stop and search (research in 2015 revealed parts of the country where black people were seventeen times more likely to be stopped and searched than white people.)40 These were (and still are) sus laws by a
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