Stop and search

I've had quite a bizarre morning. Not because I've spent it speaking to students at Kingston Uni about their A-Level results, but because on my way back to Capital HQ I was stopped and searched by the MET police under the Terrorism Act.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not annoyed about it but I just found the whole thing rather bizarre. 

Picture the scene, I walk through the ticket barriers at Kingston station, writing a text message and trying to eat my lunch when two of the Met's finest tell me they want to search me, and I’ve got no choice in the matter.

They both asked politely (although their body language seemed a bit aggressive) so once I’d finished texting my mate about how I was going to get to V festival on Sunday after work I let them do it.

Whilst the female officer took down my details, failed to recognise my postcode, then made me help her to come up a description (how hard can white, 6'2" with spiky hair be?), the male officer searched my bag.

I think he was a bit surprised when the first thing he found was a yellow lead - but after I’d explained that it was a microphone cable and nothing dodgy, he carried on searching through my stuff with a slightly relieved look on his face.

The only slightly comedy moment (from my perspective) was when he found my work ID Card. 

I'd given my full name to the female officer as Timothy, but my work ID says the name Tim.  I was then a bit bemused when I had to explain to him that 'Tim' was a shortened version of the name Timothy.

That said, the whole thing passed without incident and I carried on up to the platform.

But when I arrived, it seemed that no-one wanted to be anywhere near me.  Most of the other passengers had clearly spotted the officers speaking to me and had decided that I was up to no good. 

In fact, the person I stood next to as I was waiting for the train seemed to move away from me a bit.  I actually felt like a criminal even though I’d done nothing wrong - and it made me realise just how much we can pre-judge people for being up to no good when they are simply just going about their lives.