Baldy, statistics are easily manipulated and should never be taken at face value.

Yes, but he wasn't claiming to have seen any statistics. He wasn't even claiming that they existed. He was merely insinuating (baselessly, it seems) they might exist.

Not sure I was insinuating anything, I was trying to have a duscussion.

It seems to me, and this is purely anecdotal, that I quite often hear stats quoted regarding who is doing what to whom and how often, for instance there is a specific demographic for knife crime in the UK, backed up by a lot of hospital and police stats.

I'm well aware that stats are tricky, but the ones we have seem fairly clear that it tends to be teenage boys who stab each other.

What I'm getting at is, do you really thing that we should ignore those stats and stop and search on a random basis thus wasting lots of time of people who are statistically not likely to be involved anyway?

Okay, baldy. Let's see what you're really getting at, assuming you intend to stay on topic. Can you produce numbers demonstrating that this guy actually does belong to a "specific demographic" (specify the demographic) that actually is "statistically more likely to be involved" in the specific crime (remember which one it is) that he was wrongly arrested for?

No? Then I suggest you drop it, because your point does not stand.

What a mind-blowingly dishonest strawman argument.

Emphasis added by me.

There is an issue here with regards to what is anecdotal and what are stats. Stats are not anecdotal so I'm not sure what you are getting at. You either have the stats (or access to them or can prove them) or you don't (or can't or worse still are using imaginary stats to prove an imaginary point).