Exclusive – Jermaine Jenas hopes his stop and search documentary will make people reconsider their views
The One Show host looks at the police powers' effect on Black men across the UK in tonight's Channel 4 documentary.
The One Show's Jermaine Jenas has said that his Channel 4 documentary about Stop and Search police powers may have "fallen on deaf ears" if he'd released it a few years ago, adding that we're now "in a time for change".
The former footballer's documentary, titled The Truth About Police Stop and Search, features interviews with 40 Black men and teenagers who've recorded their experiences of Stop and Search across England. It looks at the wide reaching social, psychological and personal consequences of these powers.
When asked why now was an important time for the documentary to air, Jenas told RadioTimes.com in an exclusive interview: "The 'now' is an interesting question, but it also can be quite a loaded question.
"I'm not doing this because of what happened with George Floyd in America, I'm not doing this because of the Black Lives Matter movement. This could have been done two, three years ago. Would it have fallen on deaf ears? Maybe.
"Are we in a place now in the world where even the general society is starting to open their minds up to racial issues and maybe their own unconscious kind of bias that they have in their minds about the way they see Black people or people who are ethnic minorities? I don't know, maybe we're just in a place now where we're in a time for change.
"This relates to everything... there's more talk about things like the gender pay gap, we're all having better conversations now that can only be for good. So I think we're just in an era where we're coming out of that kind of old mindset."
On the police force itself, he said: "They're kind of a visual representation of old school types. People at the top of the table, there is not that level of diversity there that is needed to be able to implement stop and search in the right way."
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He added that being a part of the conversation that might reform Stop and Search and improve representation in the Met would be "the dream".
"I'm not the first person to talk about Stop and Search, this has been going on since the 70s. If they watch this and decide to change, it's not going to be just because of me. I'll be part of the conversation hopefully and that would be the dream.
"If I can get one white family that live in suburbia or in Richmond, that area where it's not part of their life and it's like, 'Oh actually yeah I get it now, where I used to think well if you've got nothing to hide, then you shouldn't care about getting stopped' could have been their mindset, let's just have a look at things from a different view.
"What if it's your son who gets stopped on a regular basis? What about if you walk out of the door to your local coffee shop and when you were there, police stopped you and asked you where you were going and what's in your bag – how are you going to feel then? That's essential, what we're doing."
The Truth about Police Stop and Search airs on Monday 31st May on Channel 4 at 10pm. If you’re looking for more to watch, check out our TV Guide.
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