MORE than 29,000 people were stopped and searched by Lancashire Police last year, figures have revealed.

The statistic is contained in a Home Office report called Race and the Criminal Justice System.

The figures showed that 27,795 of the stop and searches were on white people, 244 on blacks and 1,235 on Asians.

The report also shows that Lancashire Police made 69,430 arrests during 1998 and 1999. The racial breakdown was 65,417 arrests on whites, 711 on blacks and 3,229 on Asians.

Chief Superintendent David Jones, Lancashire Police's operations support co-ordinator, said: "The police service as a whole continues to change at a tremendous pace and ethnic monitoring of our activity remains an important aspect of our commitment to change.

"Lancashire stands out as having one of the country's largest ethnic minority populations and we already have established links through which we are developing a community and race relations strategy in an effort to ensure we deliver an equitable policing service to all."

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