In the heart of London, the weathered and storied pavements have silently witnessed regal parades, anti-war protests, and civil rights protests over many years. London, the capital city, is often seen as the shining city on the hill. London has the rightful claim to be a world city, hyper-multicultural, vibrant, and exciting.
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| Terrell DeCosta Jones Burton |
There are many cases one could highlight, but the case of a 15-year-old schoolboy, Terrell DeCosta Jones Burton, who, in 2017, was subject to a brutal attack by Met Police Officers is particularly noteworthy. Terrell received critical hospital treatment following his brutal, wrongful, and violent arrest while cycling in Bermondsey, South London.
Here, we see a beautiful young soul whose only misstep was existing at the deadly intersection of systemic police racism, adolescence, and being in possession of melanated skin. In a tired old repeat of our tragic history, the Police had targeted the wrong boy. Despite that, the Independent Office of Police Complaints (IOPC) unsurprisingly cleared Met officers of any wrongdoing in 2019 two years later.
Terrell, his family, and the wider community are left to swing in the wind. The response to our anger and outrage? No trauma-informed treatment, no apology, no compensation, no justice – just us, and a bucket load of tears and pain with a community left in the deep well of perpetual trauma.
Add to the Terrell incident, the savage baton attack by a plain-clothed police officer on a schoolboy in Romford in 2018, yet another incident where the community is again left in deep pain, and the officer concerned is given the all-clear and a pardon.
Add to these the cases of:
When it comes to the issue of police reform, change has been bone-achingly slow-moving at a glacial pace. The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) Police Race Action Plan, the Met Commissioners Turn Around Plan alongside Mayor Sadiq Khans Race Action Plan, all responses to the findings of the Casey Review are, have all failed to deliver any meaningful change - a testament to the resilience of racism in policing.
We now know that many of the advances made in the immediate aftermath of the publication of the seminal Stephen Lawrence report published in 1999, in hindsight, were short-term gains followed by longer-term losses. The Police began the lengthy process of rebuilding and regaining Black community confidence in those early years; however, that brief honeymoon period didn’t last long.
Within a decade of the publication of the McPherson report, Boris Johnson was Mayor of London and busily dismantling the entire police accountability and race monitoring systems and processes we fought so long and hard to secure. Boris, alongside the then Met Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson, declared in the forward to a 2008 Metropolitan Police Authority Race and Faith Inquiry report into Black officers being unfairly targeted in misconduct procedures that Met was "no longer an institutionally racist organisation."
Johnsons' catastrophic error in dismantling police accountability structures in London had devastating consequences and triggered the worst deterioration in police-community relationships ever seen in modern British history. Black public confidence in the police is at an all-time low, lower than the levels seen in the uprising against the culture of police racism witnessed in 1981 or 2011. The National Black Police Association (NBPA) has called a national Black police recruitment for the third time in its long history; such is their concern about the fact that the Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has refused to acknowledge systemic racism while internally he has launched a full-scale political attack on the NBPA and Met BPA.
What this demonstrates beyond doubt is that Black people have consistently boycotted joining the police in recent times, and these figures demonstrate that reality.
Let’s be straight up and down about it, Black people are not joining a “police force” they see as toxic, racist and harmful. A report published by the Police Foundation in 2020 found that Black officer numbers had reached their peak of 1,504 in 2016 and rose by just 86 between 2007 and 2018, from 1,412 to 1,498.
That’s an average of seven black people a year in each of those long eleven years. Today, applications have slowed to barely a trickle, and Black people are rightly refusing to join a police service they see as racist, aggressive, hostile and now targeting their children.
We know that the weight of constant suspicion, the presumption of guilt, bears heavily upon their young shoulders. London's Black children, living their best racially profiled lives, face a policing system where systemic police racism is as toxic as the iconic London smog that once blanketed this great city.
The Data Speaks, But Who Listens?
What these shocking figures have revealed is a disheartening narrative. Black, Asian, and mixed-ethnicity children account for an astonishing 69% of youth arrests in London. Such figures reflect not random chance but a pattern of targeting, a systemic hunt set against Black communities.
The hard numbers are one thing, but we don’t live as data points. Statistics, however compelling, are sterile without the pulse of human experience.
They do not bleed, they do not weep, and they do not convey the tremor in a mother’s voice as she schools her child on how to survive an encounter with those who should protect them.
The Trauma Imposed: The Echo of History in Modern Policing
The scars left by this relentless racial profiling of our communities are not only physical but cut deep into the communal psyche.
Cases like Child A, Q and X are not outliers but a repeat of a well-trodden path of systemic discrimination in policing. The disproportionate searching, the aggressive arrests without subsequent action, the ignominy of innocence lost to police prejudice—all this fuels a cycle of trauma, fear and anger that reverberates through families and communities.
Our collective community police trauma is deep, abiding and terrifying. As Black parents, we are always a single heartbeat away from experiencing our children being brutalised by the Met. That trauma is lived and real, and unless there is some process of recognising and managing that community trauma, it will continue to seethe.
God forbid a child should die as a consequence of violent police arrest and systemic racism that legitimises racial profiling because, at that point, all hell will break loose. You would’ve thought these smart politicians would know these totemic issues and understand their power and potency. They do not, and the implications are that the city hasn't learned the lessons of its past.
A System Unchecked: The Spectre of Adultification and Misguided Authority
The haunting spectre of adultification looms larger every day, casting Black children not as sentient human beings of potential and wide-eyed curiosity but as all potentially violent criminals, threats to society and law and order, to be violently confronted, restrained with overwhelming force.
This deeply pernicious and explosive trend must be fully acknowledged, challenged, and must be confronted by Black communities ourselves as, frankly, no one else gives a damn. The APA is resolute in its mission to ring the alarm, mobilise communities and stand at the vanguard of this battle, demanding reforms and transparent accountability from politicians and the police.
The Call to Arms: A Rallying Cry for Justice
It is not enough to shake our heads at the monotonous and unsettling statistics or tsk, tsk away at the harrowing stories above. This is a call to arms, a call for unity and action. We must stop simply reacting to tragedies we can all see coming.
As responsible adults, we need to be proactive in defending our Black children and do recall that 90% of our children who are arrested are subsequently released without charge. Let that sink in.
The APA conference aims to prevent an all too predictable future because the real reality is that as relations stand now, it would take just one horrific incident caught on a smartphone London could find itself burning as a result.
Conclusion: A Society on the Precipice
London’s Black community now stands on the precipice, looking into the chasm of public confidence carved by the relentless nature of systemic police racism that, like water, wears away all resistance. We now face a profound choice: do we, knowing what we know now, simply step back into complacency, or do we organise and stride forward into action?
The disproportionate arrest rates and systemic failures of a policing system are not just statistics; they are a grim testament to the reality of the system of apartheid policing and Jim Crow justice that others sanitise with semi-pseudo-scientific police and Home Office beaurospeak (made-up word), using words like “disproportionality:, ‘unconscious and implicit bias’s and ‘diversity’, or ‘we are committed to eradicating racism’, and the best one of all is of course ‘we are working with the community’.
We are the sculptors of justice and the architects of the future we wish to bequeath to our children.
The APA Conference on Policing and the Black Child has to be more than an event—it must be the crucible where we forge a new charter of demands for policing, where the concerns of Black communities are taken to the top table. We collectively demand that our children be safeguarded from the horrors of systemic racism in policing.
A Final Thought: The Vigilance of Change
We understand that our work is not done. Our generation must be the bearers of change, lest the next find themselves burdened with battles that should have been won. The data, the cases, and the experiences all point to an immutable truth: the time for change is not just nigh; it has arrived.
Join us at the APA conference. Stand with us in fighting for justice and equity and preserving our youth's future. Let us begin the work that cannot, must not, wait.
Key Arrest Statistics and Demographics
· 69% of children arrested in London are from Black, Asian, or mixed-ethnicity backgrounds.
· Black and Asian communities each account for 8% of all arrests nationwide.
Disparities in Policing
· Evidence suggests racial profiling and systemic bias within UK policing.
· Black and Asian individuals are more likely to be stopped and searched.
Media and Political Influence
· Some politicians and media outlets perpetuate harmful stereotypes, associating Black and Asian communities disproportionately with a crime.
Data on Taser Use
· 27.5% of Taser incidents involved Black children.
· 27.5% of Taser incidents involved children experiencing a mental health episode.
· 17-year-olds were the most affected age group.
Strip-search Data
· More than 2,840 children were strip-searched by police between 2018 and 2022.
· Black children are up to six times more likely to be searched.
· Over 50% of searches led to no further action.
· A significant number of searches occurred without an appropriate adult present.
Youth Justice System Statistics
· Black children are disproportionately represented at various stages of the justice system.
· 18% of stop and searches (where ethnicity was known) involve Black children.
· 15% of arrests involve Black children.
· 34% of children in custody on remand are Black.
· 29% of the youth custody population is Black (up from 18% ten years ago).
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