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Andrew McIntosh |
Passenger’s fury at station strip search
‘Travellers screened as drugs are openly sold in street’
AN innocent man subjected to a humiliating strip search has lashed out at police for randomly screening commuters at a Tube station while pushers openly sell drugs outside.
Andrew McIntosh, 41, was on his way to work as executive chef of a string of upmarket bars around Inverness Street when police with sniffer dogs stopped him at the top of the escalators in Camden Town station on Friday.
Mr McIntosh, who says he has never used drugs, objected to the use of the police dog. He said: “Next thing there were four guys around me, telling me I would have to be searched.
“I’m just an innocent bystander, going to work to earn my crust. People are brazenly selling drugs in Inverness Street every single day from about 2pm, and I’ve been fished out of a queue of people coming up the escalators, doing nothing wrong.
“I tried to phone my boss, but they took my phone from me and told me I might be trying to warn my drug dealer.”
Mr McIntosh was led from the concourse to a room where he was searched. “It was intimidating. Afterwards I went into a form of shock, then anger,” he said.
Police found nothing, and released Mr McIntosh with a receipt for his search which recorded an outcome of “no further action”. It said he had been searched under the Misuse of Drugs Act on grounds that he “avoided the police drugs dog and refused to give reason became very argumentative with police when spoken too refused to be searched (sic)”.
Mr McIntosh said: “When I walked back on Friday night there were four guys standing right outside the station, selling drugs.
“It’s the same every night. So why are all those police inside, as if everyone in there is guilty of a major crime?” He believes he was singled out because he is black, and is compiling a complaint about the search.
A British Transport Police spokesman justified the operation this week. He said: “This is a standard police operational tool. If people carry drugs then they’re breaking the law. There is a lot of drugs-related crime in that area, and we are likely to catch a lot of people carrying drugs on the station. We would hope the public would appreciate that.”
On the same day, officers subjected travellers at Camden Road station to knife checks using an electronic search arch. Of 322 people scanned, five were arrested, one for a knife offence. Figures for the Camden Town station operation were not available this week. |
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