Alliance for Police Accountability (APA) Press Release. Black Londoners Issue Open Invite to New Met Police Chief Shortlisted Candidates.

Press Release… Press Release… Press Release… Press Release.

                                             Immediate Release Sat 11th June 2022 

London's Black Communities Issue Open Invite to Shortlisted Met Police Chief Candidates. 

The Alliance for Police Accountability (APA), a UK national African and Caribbean heritage organisation formed in response to the murder of George Floyd, has extended an open invitation to the two shortlisted candidates for the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to meet London's Black Communities. 

The APA is holding its second London Black communities' consultation event, Met Commissioner: What do London's Black Communities Want? on Thursday June 16th at 6.30 pm at the IDPAD Empowerment Centre, 18-24 Lower Clapton Road, London E5 0PD

The APA conducted a consultation on this question among its members in February 2022, followed by a very successful public event held in Brixton on March 2nd 2022, with 4,000 people either attending or taking part online. 

You can watch our first APA consultation event held in Brixton here and book your in-person place for this second event in Hackney here. 

The Home Secretary, Boris Johnson and Mayor for London Sadiq Khan will interview the two shortlisted Met internal candidates on June 20th, 2022. Current Met Assistant Commissioner Nick Ephgrave and Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley are the shortlisted candidates.

In April, the APA wrote to the Home Secretary requesting that London Black communities be informally involved in the recruitment and interview process through the London Mayors' Office. That request was acknowledged but essentially ignored by the Home Secretary.

In March, the Brixton consultation expressed the unanimous view that any new Commissioner must accept the reality of police institutional racism. This was seen as essential if he was to repair the deep, inter-generational damage to Black public confidence in the Met, currently at an all-time low.

Public confidence figures clearly show that the Met does not police London's Black communities with consent. 

Any new Commissioner will need to secure the support of London's Black communities if we are to avoid a severe further deterioration of what are already profoundly strained relations. 

 Lee Jasper, former Director of Policing in London (2000-2008) and Chair of the APA, said, 

"It's important that these candidates meet and hear from London's Black communities. Given the level of public distrust of the majority of Londoners, a majority of which are Black and Asian communities, Women and Lesbian and Gay communities. So, we've extended a genuine invitation to both candidates to attend this meeting. 

We believe post-George Floyd, there needs to be a paradigm shift away from the toxic past practices, and there needs to be much deeper community engagement with this process. In some US states, this is an elected, not selected, position. 

Though the government has ignored our demands, we believe that these candidates need to demonstrate that they hear, understand, and fully appreciate the depth of London's black communities' anger and concerns.  

Therefore, both candidates are invited to come and have an informal chat, engage, and hear directly from London's Black communities themselves. Attendance would demonstrate that the candidates understand the importance of establishing a significant break with the past while respecting London Black communities. 

Whatever the Home Secretary's views on institutional racism in the Met, the new Commissioner, if they are to be successful, will need to sufficiently demonstrate the independence of mind, thought, and action necessary to win back a lost community to the police. They will need to be brave, very brave. “

All APA panellists are available for interview call 07984 181979 to arrange. 

Editor’s note. 

The Alliance of Police Accountability (APA) is a new and powerful network of Black organisations responsible for delivering a two-year national policing consultation exercise with African Caribbean heritage communities in England and Wales. 

The APA will revisit, critically address, and reinforce the founding principles of policing as established by Sir Robert Peel and the core principle of policing with consent. 

The Project recognises both the historical and contemporary growing tensions between English and Welsh black communities and the police following the death of George Floyd and the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. 

The Project will address two broad but essential questions. 

• What do black want from policing, and what do we see as the core community policing values that address institutional racism and the lived experience of black communities? 

• From a Public Health objective, what are our primary responsibilities in seeking to reduce serious violence in our communities? 

We aim to explore the black experience of policing, co-produce a Black community policing public health framework, and develop an action plan that addresses these two critical issues. 

The APA Project was developed by the Black Men 4 Change network and is chaired by Lee Jasper of Blaksox, who conceived the Project. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Black Groups Condemns Windrush Lessons Learned Review

Daughter of long serving RAF officer denied British citizenship

Your father's a serving member the Royal Air Force and you're born on an RAF base in Germany. You're automatically British right? Apparently not. Listen, like and share the desperate story of Sharon Vitalis. #WindrushScandal #HostileClimate

Mass deportation flight to Jamaica on the 30th anniversary of the release from prison of Nelson Mandela

By: Zita Holbourne and Lee Jasper. Boris Johnson's government has organised another charter flight mass deportation to after the last one. Like a dog returning to the scene of its own vomit, the Tories appear habitually addicted to racist immigration policies. This is the second such charter flight since the Windrush scandal was widely exposed, as targeting the Caribbean communities,   This new mass deportation is expected to take place on 11th February, which coincidentally, is the 30th anniversary of the release of Nelson Mandela from Victor Vester prison. We have received confirmation from several people now that they have been issued with a definite removal notice. Up to 50 people could be deported on this flight, people who will be torn apart from families including their young children, who have lived most of their lives in the UK and those still going through a deportation appeals process. Over the past week, there has been an escalation in people being detained whilst attending their regular signing in sessions at Reporting Centre’s around the country with Immigration Officers then transferring detainees to removal centres. These are all people who are fearfully complying with Home Office requirements and are now subjected to forcible detention. The government's cynical rounding up of vulnerable people, seen as nothing more than disposable garbage to be taken out, is shameful and unacceptable. The British High Commissioner to Jamaica has alleged, that all those booked on the flight have criminal records and are not related to Windrush. But we know that it includes people who are appealing against Home Office decisions. Last year, people who were originally booked on a flight to Jamaica, successfully legally challenged their deportation leading to them being removed from the flight. A whole year has passed only for them to be targeted again. All of the cases we have been made aware of involving individuals who have families here in the UK including children and, in some cases, even grandchildren. Most are people who have spent the majority of their lives in the UK and who are to be deported to what will be a strange country as far as their lived experience is concerned. Some will have been criminalised by virtue of their immigration status and deportation creates a double, or rather triple punishment when you account for the periods they were detained. A British born person would not be sentenced for a crime, serve their time, be rehabilitated only to be denied access to essential services such as health care, detained in inhumane facilities, to find their life even worse than when serving time in prison, only then be deported to a strange country, separated from loved ones, left destitute and alone. We believe that as there is clearly no guarantee of fairness and justice there should be no deportations and that the government must stop racially targeting Caribbean communities and their families. Given the ongoing Windrush Scandal and the government's failure to adequately compensate victims (with the vast majority receiving no compensation to date) we can have no faith that these detainees have been treated fairly and within the law. Our communities have suffered enough over recent years because of the scandal, which is on top of racism and injustice amplified by austerity. It is not acceptable for the government to return to the discredited policy of creating a racially hostile environment for black people. The British High Commissioner to Jamaica may claim that those targeted on this charter flight have no link to the Windrush generation but the reality is that if it were not for the legacy of colonialism, their families would not have come to the UK in order to work hard and help the post-war recovery in the 1950s and 60s and they, in turn, would not have come to the UK to join their close family members. Some of those targeted for these deportations included people who have served in the British armed forces, British when it suited the government but now deemed both undesirable and illegal. Having valiantly served Queen and country in active service, they are now cast aside with some suffering injuries and post-traumatic stress. We have called an emergency protest to oppose the flight and wider injustice of the government's hostile environment including the failure to make compensation accessible to all the families impacted by the brutality of the Windrush scandal. The protest will commence at 6 pm on Thursday 6th February opposite Downing Street. It is called by BARAC UK and BAME Lawyers for Justice which is an umbrella body for a group of Black and Asian race equality activists, lawyers and Windrush justice groups, all are welcome to join us. The action is also supported by the Society of Black Lawyers, Blaksox and Momentum Black Caucus. Whilst the British government have a lot to answer for, we cannot forget or let off the hook those complicit with the process of deporting people on charter flights, the airlines, security companies, pilots, etc. but also nations such as Jamaica, who allow these flights to land and who are paid to accept the wholesale illegal deportation of people without consideration of their circumstances and the inhumanity of their treatment. That's why we are supporting and encourage people to join the emergency demo called by Movement for Justice at 12 noon on Monday 3rd February outside the Jamaican High Commission calling on the Jamaican Government to follow the lead of the Nigerian government and refuse to allow the plane to land. We are also supporting Windrush activist, Patrick Vernon's petition; The Windrush Compensation Scheme, demanding the application of the principles of restorative justice and fairness to the victims of the Windrush scandal, repairing the harm done by this government's hostile environment policy and its impacts on African and Caribbean communities and others from the Commonwealth. The petition demands the Home Secretary adopt a 10-point plan to write the wrongs of the Windrush Scandal. MPs have the opportunity to make amendments to the Windrush Compensation Bill at the Second Reading of the bill in February. We can have no confidence in this government's commitment to treat people fairly and call upon all good people to support our struggle for justice and oppose state racism. We would also ask that you sign, share and promote the following petitions: https://www.change.org/p/stop-all-charter-flight-mass-deportations-to-jamaica-othercommonwealth-countries https://www.change.org/p/prime-minister-conduct-an-independent-public-inquiry-into-thewindrush-scandal https://www.change.org/p/british-airways-stop-helping-the-home-office-deport-people https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/restorative-compensation-scheme-for-windrushscandal?just_launched=true If you want to get in touch please contact bamelawyersforjustice@gmail.com or baracuk@gmail.com

Tory policy changes to bail sees serious violence offenders free to roam our streets.

I accuse Boris Johnson’s Government of the most cynical and heinous betrayal of the people, letting serious criminals roam our streets with impunity. You may be one of the many people who perennially ask why is violence is rising in our communities? One of the reasons is that Tory’s policy of failing to place serious sex and violent offender suspects on restrictive bail conditions. 

A BBC Newsnight investigation has uncovered that thousands of serious criminal offenders were simply left unsupervised after being accused of the most appalling and serious violent and sexual offences. 

This is horrendous and means that since 2017, at least 93,000 people who should have been either denied bail or been given bail with strict restrictions, were left to kill, maim and rape. 

How many lives could’ve been saved, how many traumas, tears, surgical operations, stress and death have we seen as a result of this catastrophic failure of this lying bastard of a Government? 

How many sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, friends, wives, husbands, lovers and neighbours did we lose? 

How many people today suffered the trauma of serious sexual or violent assaults were victimised as a direct result of this policy? 

This alone, when one thinks of the staggering consequences, should lose the #Tories the election. 

A bloody miasma trail of serious trauma, grief and lifetime of pain’ loss and disability leads straight to the door of No 10 Downing Street. 

The Rt. Hon. Priti Patel should resign with immediate effect. I’m hoping Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum will drive this home. 

The Tories flooded our streets with unsupervised serious criminals for at least the last two years, if not more, given the similar a day utterly disastrous consequences of the probation service privatisation. 

I believe this has been going on for much longer than two years. I have long suspected the privatisation of Probation Services has also had the same effect, dangerous criminals left to roam the streets. 

Is it any wonder our communities feel like the Wild West at times? 93,000 at the last count? 

Imagine, the poorest communities were abandoned to suspected serious sex and violent offenders, as a result of a policy whose primary effect was to unleash hell onto our streets. 

Badman left to roam and marauding our communities at will. Is it any wonder why so few people have any confidence in policing and criminal justice when dangerous criminals reported to the police are simply released back into our communities? 

This policy equates to politically motivated, state-sanctioned, corporate manslaughter, a deliberate policy that saw rape, violence and murder rise in our communities. 

This policy was a violent criminals charter. 

It had the material effect of flooding our streets with dangerous people who should have been denied bail or were either severely restricting their movements or heavily supervised. 

#KnifeCrime #SexCrime #ViolentCrime #YouthViolence #Rape#ToryMurder. #GeneralElection #VoteLabour