Lambeth Metropolitan Police officers raid the home of murdered teenager, Louis Johnson.

 

Louis Johnson was just 16 years of age, and tragically was the victim of a brutal murder, a knife attack that took place at East Croydon station on 27th January 202 as he made his way back to his family home. 

 

Needless to say that this cruel and savage attack on this young teenager left his family, mother, sister, elder and younger brother utterly devastated. 

 

The background of his tragic death is illustrative of the failure of local authorities to implement safeguarding and risk assessment measures for homeless families. 

 

Louis and his family were living in temporary accommodation provided by the council and were, unbelievably moved a total of nine times in five years across several London boroughs. The family found themselves living in a variety of different postcodes and having to change school continually, Louis faced threats of gang violence, both within schools and his local neighbourhood.

 

What this case reveals is that there are considerable implications concerning safeguarding issues and risk assessments for families being moved by local authorities from one postcode to another and issue we intend to take up. 

 

Louis was making his way home that fateful January afternoon waiting for a train at East Croydon station when another youth fatally stabbed him. He died at the scene at 4.45 p.m. despite receiving urgent medical attention. 

 

His family received a call from Croydon Council's, social work team telling them that their son had "been injured" at around 6 p.m. that day. The social worker informed the family that they had no more information other than Lewis was wounded and that they should ring around London hospitals.

 

The family in total and utter confusion, shock and disbelief hurriedly rang as many hospitals as possible but could not locate Louis. 

 

The British Transport Police (BTP) who were investigating the case updated their Twitter account at 8 p.m. and yet they still had not formally contacted the family, to inform them of Louis's death. 

 

Some agonising four hours later, the BTP arrived at the family home to tell his mother and brothers that Louis had been murdered. Unbelievably, the British Transport Police had failed to inform the family before they announced his death to the world. 

 

The consequence of that was the family were left speculating whether the unidentified person cited on the BTP Twitter account as having died at East Croydon station, was, in fact, their beloved son and brother Louis.

 

One can only imagine the sickening terror that gripped the family as they frantically rang hospitals and waited for someone to tell them what was happening.

 

The British Transport Police apologised profusely to the family telling them they "had dropped the ball" by failing to inform his family immediately. A chilling understatement of a catastrophic error in communications and one utterly exacerbated on what was the worst day of this family's life.

 

On 5th March, Mom attended Charing Cross Police Station to collect her deceased son's belongings and provided the Police with a copy of his death certificate.

 

But this wasn't the end of this family's tragic ordeal.

 

On 19th March 2020 and 8:30 a.m. while the family were asleep at their home, five Lambeth based, Metropolitan Police officers smashed their way into their property, screaming "it's the police" detaining all in the house and kicking off the bedroom door of Louis's 15-year-old brother.

 

Mom, who is disabled with a chronic illness, could hear her younger son shouting, panicked she rushed from her bedroom to find out what was going on. 

 

She found her way barred by a police officer. Louis eldest brother, who was sleeping downstairs, also heard the screams of his little brother but could do nothing. 

 

The youngest brother was bundled, manhandled and cuffed by police officers, and it was only then the officers told the family, they were looking for Louis. His younger brother had been managing his grief by wearing his deceased brothers' old football shirt, and one can only assume the Police wrongly thought the younger brother was Louis.

 

How did this happen? Louis was arrested in 2019 for riding a stolen moped and had been placed on bail. Mom provided the Met with a copy of his death certificate shortly after his death. However, this information was not passed onto Lambeth. 

 

So a family still grieving their loss had their world shattered as Police officers stormed their family home. The response of the officers to being told that Louis was dead was to retort, "Yeah, we've heard that one before."

 

It was after Mom produced a death certificate that the officers shocked began to calm down and retreat, offering apologies and condolences.

 

The family were left traumatised by the event that was all over in 20 minutes flat. 

 

The Police left them shaking, crying in both fear and disbelief as they left the family home. The Police issued no paperwork, and no one contacted the family to explain. Mom had to reach out to the lead investigation officer handling Louis's murder, BTP officer Sam Blackwood to find out why they had been raided.

 

That day the family received calls from Lambeth Borough Commander Wingrove who wanted to come and personally offer apologies to the family.

 

The family, still in shock and seething with anger declined the offer of a visit because they believed any such apology would be insincere and lack any real conviction.

 

The following days and weeks saw the family's trauma deepened as they sought to come to terms with what had happened to them. Such was the level of fear and anxiety every time the doorbell rang, or a car pulled up at their home they'd panic revisiting the trauma of the raid.

 

Mum's illness aggravated by the stress of this incident became much worse. Her two sons were left deeply traumatised by this whole event. 

 

The entire family now needs on-going therapeutic support and attempt to make sense of what has happened to them. 

 

The Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick, requested if she could personally apologise to the family. Given these tragic circumstances, the family's grief and shock as a result of these horrific events, there were in no mood for a police whitewash and synthetic apology.

 

While the Police have apologised and rightly so, that's not enough on this occasion. Police apologies are viewed by many in our communities as both routine and mostly insincere. 

 

Ethics dictate that they should pay for the counselling the family requires and offer financial compensation for the stress and damage caused. Also, the bodycam footage of the officers involved should be released to the public.

 

We intervened, in this case, putting pressure on the authorities to resolve their housing situation and we're glad to report the family have now been offered and accepted a new home. 

 

The matter was also looked at by the Independent Office of Public Complaints, (IOPC) who referred back to the Metropolitan Police Service to investigate themselves. 

 

We believe this to be a wholly inadequate response and call upon the IOPC to undertake an independent investigation and ensure community oversight through establishing an independent community reference group.

 

With Police community relations in London at crisis point, this case will further damage severely strained community tensions. With film footage of aggressive, and wholly disproportionate stop and search incidents appearing daily, set against the backdrop of a 45% increase in the use of the power since March, things are agitated on the streets. 

 

Against the backdrop of the tragic murder of George Floyd in the U.S and the massive Black Lives Matter demonstrations in London, it is safe to say the Met no longer enjoy the mandate of policing with consent regarding the African and Caribbean communities of London.

And in addition Harinegy, Police recently tasered a black boy climbing a wall who the fell and broke his back. The local community is seething with anger as a result. 

 

The Mayor and the MPS have been intensely lobbied and advised by several key community individuals of theses rising tension across the capital. As a former Deputy Mayor of London, my view is that we are one incident away from a significant backlash. Disproportionate use of Covid19 powers and the massive rise in the use of stop and search, use of section 60 stops and have gravely exacerbated community tension, and people are angry.

 

African and Caribbean communities, according to the Mets own public confidence survey has recorded the lowest level of expressed public confidence since records began. 

 

The Mayor alongside local authorities like Lambeth, (the borough that has the lowest level of community confidence in the Met of all the African and Caribbean communities in London) Haringey, Hackney, Southwark, Brent, Croydon, Lewisham and Newham must now engage with local communities in co-producing a new framework for police accountability and improving community confidence. 

 

Failure to do so would constitute a catastrophic failure of leadership that will come at an enormous cost to the capital. 

 

A new police-community compact based on agreed community demands should be developed, setting out a new way forward. Any unilaterally top-down imposed political strategies/solutions will ultimately fail. 

 

It is in the detail of how the Met and IOPC respond to incidents such as Louis Johnson family, and the many other events now recorded on film that will set the tone for what happens next. Let us hope good sense prevails. 

 

London's immediate fate as we head towards the summer now fate hangs in the balance. 

 

Lee Jasper Says Resurgent Police Racism A Real Threat to Democracy.

Rampant institutional racism within the Met has seen black officers undermined, particularly when challenging police racism, they have become increasingly marginalised as a consequence of some being maliciously targeted. Many now see their careers lay in utter ruins, as a result of these malicious and vexatious complaints, placed in context of the toxic deterioration of black community police relations in London and throughout the country, this crisis poses a real threat to British democracy, respect for the rule of law and the maintenance of the Queen's peace.

Without the requisite trust and confidence of the general public in the policing, administration of justice and the principle of equality of all citizens before the law, chaos and anarchy beckons. This is as a direct consequence of prioritising prejudice over justice.  Not only are a black suspects being disproportionally treated at the hands of police officers, but we have seen an unprecedented attack on senior black officers within the Metropolitan police service. As a result  Scotland Yard's senior management team has once again become a snowy white peak of privilege and exclusion.

Fmr Chief Constable Michael Fuller

In today's Gaurdian newspaper we see former senior Met officer Micheal Fuller ask why there has been no further black progression to Chief Constable and why so few senior black officers?

He is right to raise this issues. As Deputy Mayor I oversaw back police officer recruitment, and as a result of an aggressive positive action recruitment and promotion policies than Metropolitan Police Service​ doubled the number of black officers in six years. At that time we had more senior black officers than at any other time in the Mets history.

The reason for such success? Politics leadership from the Mayor on insisting any new funding paid for by him came at a cost of securing improved Black recruitment. Such regression as we see now is simply unforgivable, as is the fact that relations between the Met and London's black communities have been allowed to continually fester to the point of toxicity.

I say Sadiq Khan​ and his current Deputy Mayor for Policing, Sophie Linden​ have utterly failed to confront the residual and resurgent racism of the Met and as a direct result of thefailure to hold the Met to proper account, we have a situation where the Met has severely regressed on race issues.

That institutionalised racism is still a problem within British free services is not just some 'partisan' political view from "left-wing extremists" with an "anti-police agenda" far from it.

Everyone ,from the former beleaguered Prime Minister Thersea May to the current national lead for the National Chief Constables Association, Chief Superintendent Gavin Wilson agrees with me. He recently admitted that the police remain "institutionally racist" when launching yet another new initiative, following countless previous initiatives costing millions of pounds, all aimed at recruiting and retaining black officers.

I know from personal experience as a former Deputy Mayor of London, that tackling racism within the Met is perfectly possible with strong political will, and that was clearly demonstrated when Ken Livingstone was Mayor and I was one of his Deputies. I would constantly intervene with the Met senior command when these issues arose. It was the only way in which black Londoners could be reassured that complaints of police racism, brutality or corruption were taken seriously and could have any real faith in the police complaints process. Such confidence was incredibly low back then, but today, because of the malign neglect of the Mayor, the Commissioner and the troubled history of the police complaints process, such confidence is virtually non-existent.

I have never known things to be so bad other than the years 1981 to 1986.

Both are failing to tackle the Met's out of control racism

The real reality within the Met today is one of the  existence of a consistent trend of disproportionate targeting of black and ethnic minority police officers facing disciplinary action over the last 30 years. This has led to a swathe of senior black officers being removed from their posts,  the disproportionate rate of disciplinary actions against black officers has increased under the leadership of Sadiq, while the total number of warrented African and or Caribbean officers in the Met has gone down. We are losing good black officers as a direct result of this failure to drive back the rise of racism within British policing.

The number of black officers leaving the force within the first two years of their recruitment has skyrocketed. This is largely a result of idealistic young people joining the police force, and when they get out of their training college, and are confronted with the reality of racism inside British police stations, they refuse to  endure such a toxic working environment. It quickly becomes apparent that the culture of racism within the police force is so deeply embedded into the informal cultural value system of this institution, that it makes a mockery and hypocrisy of the police commitment to tackling  institutional racism.


"As at 31 March 2018, 7% of all officers were Black and Minority Ethnic (BME), the highest proportion since records began. While BME representation in the police workforce has continued to improve, such groups are still under-represented as 14% of the population in England and Wales are BME. Over the last year, 9% of joiners were BME, compared with 5% of leavers."  

Of the 7,850 BME officers in the 43 police forces in England and Wales, 42% classified themselves as Asian or Asian British, 29% as Mixed, 18% as Black or Black British, and 11% as Chinese or Other ethnic group. These proportions have remained stable over recent years. 

Levels of BME under-representation were highest among Senior ranks (i.e. chief inspector or above) compared with constables and other ranks. For example, 4% of officers of rank chief inspector or above were BME, compared with 7% of constables. Police Workforce as of March 31st.  Home Office Statistical Bulletin 11/18 

Supt Robyn Williams Most señor Black woman in the Met Suspended 

What I find interesting is the way some police services are now defining BME  officers. I guarantee, if you were to ask your local police service who is included in that category, you would be shocked by the result, anyone can self define themselves as BME with no questions asked.





In actual fact this bulletin shows us that only 6.6% of British police officers declare themselves BAME and are fully warranted police constables. When one breaks down the diversity these officers, something very interesting comes to light.

This means there are 3,326 Asian Police Officers

Only 1420  Black officers national and whilst the rate of dismissal for white officers was 1.5% for BME officers it was a staggering 4.5%.  

WPC Carol Howard Victimised 

Supt Jeff Boothe Suspended 

Remember WPC Carol Howard awarded £37k for compensation for suffering racism and victimisation at work, and she was the Mets "diversity poster girl" ? Or how About Supt Robyn Williams  or what about Supt Jeff Boothe, Croydon Borough Commander ?

What the current Met figures tell us, is that black police officers are catching racist hell on a daily basis and more are leaving pr being dismissed.

Ass Commissioner Pat Gallon Couldn't Stand The Racism of the Met. 

The most senior Black officer in the UK Metropolitan Police Service. Assistant Commissioner Pat Gallan left last year amid rumours that she couldn't bear the racism she encountered under  Commissioner Cressida Dick.

The Commissioner is a senior officer I know well as the former head of Operation Trident, she had to be constantly restrained and challenged from initiating discredited policing practice to try and secure more convictions.

Commissioner Dicks position on institutionalised racism is crystal clear and fundamentally wrong.

She believes the Met is no longer institutionally racist and from that perspective, all other serious errors of judgement and misconception occur. The failure of a sick patient to recognise they have a serious illness will often result in tragic consequences.

Time and time again,  as head of Operation Trident, she would urge me to allow her officers to use a range of discredited policing tactics, such as super grass testimony, anonymous witnesses and other heavily discredited and largely abandoned unethical policing tactics. I consistency resisted her demand whilst in post, however once we lost the election in 2008 it wasn't long before she convinced Boris Johnson to turn Operation Trident into London's "anti gang unit" and thereby giving the impression that all London gangs are black by definition.

She once told me that Operation Trident should be disbanded because white officers were complaining that black murder victims were receiving a "premium service"  this was after after years in which the Met failed to solve hundreds of black murders in the capital.  Cressida's complacency on police racism is of such staggering proportions that it borders on the fringes of being professionally categorised,  in my opinion, bordering on an acute mental disorder, characterised by routine and constant psychotic denial in the face of overwhelming objective facts.

However she was not alone in her miscalculation and this dangerous complacency is currently shared by the Mayor of London, despite his professional record as a solicitor he has become weak, timid and intimidated by the Empire of the Met. It is a political failure that will ultimately cost the capital dear.

The tension between  London's African and Caribbean communities and the police is evident every single day from the hundreds of encounters in which Met police officers are now facing hostile crowds, many of whom who believe the Met are actively racially profiling and targeting black people.

Having lost the trust and confidence of London's black communities it will only take an single incident, whether the arrest is legal or not, the community perception will undoubtedly be of yet another oppressive, violent racist arrest, and all incidents are now being refracted through that lens.

This is a consequence of the failure of the Mayor and Commissioner to fill the information, confidence and reassurance gap that has spawned over the lest decade. A dangerous vacuum currently exist in London.

With the IOPC investigating Charing Cross Police Station in the West End as a potential hornets nest of police racism, corruption and criminality, the toxic nature of Metropolitan police racism can be seen to be bleeding out of New Scotland Yard onto the streets of London. These Charing Cross officers are alleged to have operated a "Mafia cartel" using the blue badge as cover for their criminality. They racially abused black police officers and suspects, and it is alleged were using drugs, perverted the course of justice and subjected women and vulnerable groups to vitriol, violence and illegal abuse.

As we saw in Romford, with the arrest of the 17-year-old black boy, the Met regularly uses overwhelming and disproportionate violence when arresting black people. It continues to racially target our communities, through a culture of racial profiling executed through the power of stop and search that sees the racial targeting of black people, usually justified by suspicion of low-level drugs possession. This is despite the fact that white people consistently use more drugs than black communities, a fact backed up by British Crime Survey and countless other academic studies.

The police are literally charging black people for crimes, for which white people are receiving a caution. The scale of this activity is widespread and has led directly to the disproportionate criminalisation of our communities under the flags of popular convenience i.e "war on drugs and gangs."

Whether it's as employees within the police service, anti 'gang' workers, who work in partnership with the police, such as Gwenton Dennis Sloley​ or Ken Hinds​ or indeed Labour​ Cllr Dr Mahamed Hashi. All were subjected to police harassment, despite the fact that all of them had extensive track records of positively "working in partnership"  with the Met to improve relations with London's black communities.

Or whether it's black officers within the service facing an edifice of institutionalised racism, that forces them into making a choice of enduring an unremitting wall of racism, being falsely accused and undermined, passed over for promotion or simply leaving the job as thousands of black recruits do within the first two years of their recruitment.

You have to ask yourself why so many are leaving? The answer is as clear as it is stark. Ugly resurgent institutionalised racism within the Met has been allowed to fester and grow utterly unchallenged by either the Mayor of London​ and Commissioner Cressida Dick and has now become a raging monster totally out of control.

The consequences for London are profound, what is required is urgent political recognition of the extraordinary serious nature of problem and a clear plan of action that seeks to reverse the toxic advance of institutionalised racism within policing. The failure to do that will simply lead to further deterioration, of what is already the singularly the most profound crisis of black public confidence in policing in modern times.

Whether you're a black police officer, or a black suspect or a black professional working in partnership the Met to "improve relations", the Met makes no distinction. What is painfully apparent is that, when push comes to shove, whatever our fanciful imaginings and vague pretensions about the Met. the stone cold realty is the institution remains so virulently infected with racism as to present a profound threat to the multicultural democracy know as London.

Politicians, the police and others need to start seriously engaging with communities instead of recruiting and hand selecting those black individuals and organisations who they ruthlessly exploit, as external black cladding, camouflage to mask their institutional racist nature and oppressive behaviour. And many in our communities work with them believing they are committed to change, What the current state of relations tells us is that no such commitment exists at the senior or institutional level, and that those officers who are committed to the programme are in a tiny minority within the force.

The reality is that our communities are increasingly waking up to the dangers constituted by institutionalised racism within the Met. Whether that is the horrendous treatment of black suspects ur  black police officers, the outcome is the same. As we approach the forthcoming London mayoral elections, and indeed face the distinct possibility of a general election, we will need to ensure we have the most robust articulation of major political, civil rights demands, from all the political parties, capable of pushing back, reducing and ultimately eliminating a policing and criminal justice culture (read David Lammy's excellent report) that produces more negatively disproportionate outcomes for black Londoners than the Boer Police of South Africa delivered under the apartheid regime.

There can be no greater illustration of the extent of racism within British policing and criminal justice services, that it can without specific codification of racism into law, outperform the predations of a apartheid policing and criminal justice system. That's Olympic standard racism.