YP Letters: West Yorkshire fingerprint scheme could target ethnic minorities
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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Hide AdThe 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?