FURIOUS Southend councillors have called for more stop and searches and zero tolerance on drugs and weapons after the latest York Road attack in which a boy was shot with a BB gun.

Independent Southend councillor Mike Assenheim, who has become the liaison between the local authority and police, wants to empower officers to search anyone – to catch out offenders and discourage further incidents.

Mr Assenheim, who is also councillor responsible for regulatory control, said: “I am getting peeved with this as a councillor and as the police liaison.

“I am going to go for this. I really think the police need some help, they can’t do everything on their own.

“It’s getting ridiculous now – it’s absolutely crazy how many incidents there are. I will be speaking to the cabinet to see if we can at least try and get something done.”

Police will step up patrols, but cannot carry out blanket searches after signing up for a new policy. Officers can stop and search people about whom they have reasonable suspicion, but Mr Assenheim is calling for stronger Section 60 powers to be brought in. This would mean anyone could be searched, regardless of suspicion.

A Section 60 was introduced in the immediate aftermath of Hassan Mohammed Ibrahim’s murder, in York Road, in July, to prevent any further violence in the area.

But since then, Essex Police has signed up to a new policy which makes it harder to do it amid claims it breaches people’s human rights.

Chief Insp Simon Anslow said Sunday’s incident would not pass the stricter threshold, but said police would continue to search people if they had reasonable suspicion.

An extra 10 police officers a day will be patrolling central Southend over the next two days and Southend’s proactive Operation Booth will act on intelligence collected.

The district commander said: “We won’t stop every single incident, but what we want to make sure is that incidents between private individuals don’t overspill and create wider risk for the public.

“We will continue to police the streets and identify who is putting others at risk and act positively with them.

“There will be an increased presence in York Road in the next few days, in particular to prevent there being an immediate aftermath.

We are identifying what needs to be done to protect people involved in the incidents.

“Where this happened we don’t have an up-to-date intelligence picture, so we need people to call us about activity.

“Operation Booth’s success shows we will deal with things quickly. If people don’t tell us about activity, we can’t do anything about it.”

The shooting follows a man being stabbed in the groin in York Road on September 12, however Southend police are not linking the two incidents.