Piers Morgan received the read of a lifetime on Good Morning Britain after making comments in support of stop and search routines carried out by police.
During the morning broadcast, charity founder Justin Finlayson of The United Borders Project shared some poignant remarks in response to Piers' discrediting of data surrounding the rise in knife violence throughout the country.
The discussion opened with mother Alison Cope holding a container with the ashes of her son who died from a nightclub stabbing.
The morning show commentator then introduced Finlayson, a former bus driver, who started his organization to unite rival gangs. Morgan opened the debate about stop and search by mentioning that Finlayson almost lost his son to knife violence.
Just watched @piersmorgan on the Stop & Search debate on GMB and it's worrying how dangerously out of touch he is.
For a man in the position he is in to be so incompetent as to racialise knife crime and criminalise an entire people is scary pic.twitter.com/MbMKWX7Rd8— Steve (@hiyol92) November 15, 2018
“Five months after you launched that charity, your own son, Rico, who is with you, was stabbed five times by seven men,” he said. “Is he right, is there a problem with stop and search? What is the answer?”
“I’ve heard you talk about stop and search, as well, and advocated for it,” the panelist responded.
“Am I wrong?” Morgan questioned.
Finlayson responded by explaining the history of stop and search and how it has disproportionately done blanket searches of suspects instead of targeting specific criminals. He noted that Morgan was “advocating for something that doesn’t affect you.”
“Here you are advocating for something that doesn’t affect you, and you are asking for it to come back?” he argued.
The journalist questioned if the data suggests the attacks are predominantly by performed Black men.
“Do you accept that vast majority of knife attacks happening right now in this country are by young Black males on other young Black males? Do you accept that as a statical fact?” Morgan asked.
“When has one person become the voice for an entire nation?” the father quickly responded. “I also feel that the media campaigns for the criminalization of young black people."
The host then brought up a statistic by Trevor Phillips, the head of the Racial Equality Commission: "20 Black people killed from knife violence this year," he said.
“When does one person become a voice for an entire nation?” Finlayson replied.“I’ve never seen him in a barber shop or food shop.”
The debate continued with other commentators like Leroy Logan, former Metropolitan Police superintendent, sharing his thoughts.
“There's a difference between targeted, intelligence-based, community-focused policing, and the stop and search that goes with it," he stated.
"We have seen… One in five people come out with a positive when they're stopped, which means four out of five people are stopped unnecessarily," he continued.
Morgan continued to stand by his point throughout the debate.
UK rapper Official Giggs expressed his frustrations on Instagram.
“Have you yourself ever experienced the trauma or violations, and a lot of the time ABUSE OF POWER of ‘being stopped and search [sic] because you look like…'“
Now is not the time, Morgan; it has never been.
Check out the full discussion below:
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