A Black Psychiatrist and Sarah Reed. Why do black professional men always fail our black sisters?

#Justice4SarahReed Sarah Reed Urgent Update. Weds 12th July Day 8. 

This is bound to be controversial but personally after what I have seen at the Inquest of Sarah Reed so far, I don’t give a damn I'll see anybody in court.

Let me show how deep institutional racism works in the criminal justice system in the UK.

Sarah Reed was on remand for four months for an alleged assault. She had been on a mental health ward and was molested by an elderly white patient, defended herself and was arrested for assault.

In the days and weeks before her death on January 11th 2015, a white male Deputy Prison Governor concluded that Sarah Reed was psychotic and needed to be removed from Holloway jail segregation unit and taken to hospital.

Dr. Darren Van Bull. Psychiatrist. 

This young black dreadlocks man is Dr Darren Bull. He is a Psychiatrist at Holloway. He sat in on the same meeting as the Deputy Prison Governor. Both were at the same mental health review of Sarah's treatment.

The Deputy Governor was clear and forceful in his view, when he gave evidence at Sarah's Inquest. His professional view was that Sarah was clearly psychotic and needed to be removed from prison asap.  He gave his testimony with clarity and strength.

A note of this review meeting was produced after forensic investigation of the files.

Dr Bull also gave evidence at Sarah's inquest. He stated that in his professional opinion, not only was Sarah not psychotic, but her anti psychotic meds should be reduced, as he suspected she may have been smoking Spice which he says mimics the symptoms of psychosis. He then began to order the reduction of he her anti psychotic meds.

First, how do you get Spice into a prison segregation unit when Sarah was in her cell, 24/7 not allowed even a shower, and on four man unlock with no visitors? Who brought it in, prison officers?

Second, Sarah toxicology report showed she had no illicit drugs in her blood, none.

The result of reducing Sarah's meds was that she becomes viciously tormented in that cell by her own demons. She begged, and begged, to be given her meds back. She was ignored.

We heard at the Inquest how Sarah was consumed by visions, 

She never slept day after day, night after night, she is recorded as having sat on her bunk., rocking back and forth staring at the wall, endlessly repeating a religious chant, begging Christ to release her.

So this house negro is advanced a Spice theory hoping this bullshit will stick with the aim of obscuring his rank in competence, mendacity and complicity with Sarah's death.

Stuck in that cell, 24 hours a day, no medication and plagued by horrendous psychotic hallucinations.

Dr Bulls written report failed to reflect or even account for the Deputy Governors concerns, when asked why his report was the polar opposite of what was actually discussed, he stammered, stumbled and choked and could not provide an adequate explanation or answer.

His report concluded that Sarah was emotionally disturbed but other wise fine, definitely not psychotic and could therefor remain in Holloway segregation unit. Had he concluded differently Sarah would be alive today.

We can shout racism all we like, but this brother came to an Inquest and lied to protect the system, while a white man came and told the truth. Are you feeling this family?

I have never been so ashamed of black men, as I sat there yesterday (11th July 2017) and watched this fool explain how he co signed Sarah's death warrant. The man was arrogant and cocky until he was confronted with the evidence of the Deputy comments, which thank goodness he was not aware of this when he took the stand.

When the inconsistency was raised he crumbled and said that the words were as far as he could recall was best recollection at the time.

Truth is, its obvious he lied. Because this is an Inquest and not a criminal trial, the normal rules of criminal prosecution don't apply and after this fool lied and conspired to obscure the truth, the Coroner refusing to let him be pressed any more, let him leave the stand.

I am viscerally affected, mortified and heart broken and I thought about this  long and hard and I cannot simply let this pass and neither should you.

This man should be treated like the pariah he is. We know his type and we know they will do anything for the white mans shilling. This one was an eager beaver though.. he tried to play smart and got caught out. He may have walked away form the Inquest but let him become a pariah.

He has the blood of Sarah Reed on his hands.

These are the black men who make me weep, wearing his dreadlocks like a cultural badge of honour, worn simply to impress his white upper middle class colleges with his trendy deadlocked multiculturalism. All the while selling out the community under his care.

More too come, but let’s ensure that the everyone knows who Dr Bull is and what he's done. 

https://www.facebook.com/DrDBull/

Sarah Reeds Birthday TwitterStorm Weds June 22nd 2016.

Black man, victim of vicious racist attack and institutional racism dies.

The Tragic Case of Tatenda Kamasho: Black man victim of vicious racist attack and institutional racism dies a preventable death.

#TatendaKamasho #BlackLivesMatter © Lee Jasper

The reality of the full and nuanced effects of racism on the day-to-day quality of lives of black people in Britain is rarely recognised. The intersection between institutional racism, the criminal justice system, NHS and mental health services has been one of troubling concern for many years.

Cases such as Rocky Bennet, Sean Rigg and Sarah Reed provide tragic testimony to this issue, a matter I’ve written about here, previously. 

The case of 23 year African British born man, Tatenda Kamasho is yet another tragic case.

Tatenda had previously been the victim of vicious racist attack that took place in Northampton in 2012, when aged just 20. Whilst waiting in the queue at the local McDonalds when 18yr old Jordace Sinclair demanded Tatenda stopped talking.

He then physically attacked Tatenda, taking a knife and stabbing him so hard the blade broke. Sinclair then proceeded to viciously batter him and eventually bit a chunk from Tatenda’s cheek.

Following the attack, the cheek wound became increasingly infected turning septic and eventually resulted in Tatenda being induced into a five-day coma.

Once awake, Tatenda’s mental health deteriorated to such an extent that he began to suffer hallucinations and became deeply psychotic. Prior to this had no history of mental illness, nor is here any such history within his family.

The trauma of this racist attack, combined with the septicaemia infection had resulted in a serious deterioration of this young man's mental health.

Over the course of the next four years received treatment for his illness, he and his family were hopeful that he'd make a full recovery.

His parents, mother, Mrs. Praexedis Moyo-Kamasho a Registered Nurse and father, Mr. Cosmas Kamasho a Chartered Surveyor residing in Hanwell, West London, fully supported their son through this difficult time.

Tatenda managed to secure himself a place in a supported living accommodation project in January of this year. He was visiting his family at the weekends and in March was preparing to celebrate Mother's Day at home with the family.

On Saturday, 5th March parents received a phone for from the project saying that Tatenda was physically unwell and that an ambulance had been called. On reporting Tatenda’s symptoms to the operator, the support worker was told that no ambulance was needed and that she should continue to observe his condition.

The parents immediately phoned Tatenda and he reported that he had a sore throat and had not eaten well for four days. When they arrived at the project, they noted that he looked weak and appeared not to be able to swallow properly. He was so unsteady on his feet, that his father had to help him use the bathroom. Once he settled, they bought him some food from a local takeaway and sat as he slowly ate the food.

Failure to act could have cost Tatenda his life

They went home, looking forward to seeing him the next day. On Mothering Sunday, 6th March his parents called Tatenda who did not answer his phone then they called the support workers who told them that his condition had again deteriorated. On attending the project they saw their son in great pain and unable to move.

With the parents in attendance and with Mum being a qualified Nurse backing up her concerns, the support worker tried again to get an ambulance and during the course of this conversation,

Mrs Kamasho intervened and spoke directly to the operator directly.

Intense discussions took place as Mum sought to convince the operator that her son's condition warranted an ambulance and was very serious. The operator took a different view and simply refused to dispatch an ambulance.

After about twenty five minutes of deliberation, and the family reporting more serious symptoms, then and only then did the operator, conceded and agreed to send an emergency mobile paramedic.

Once the emergency paramedic finally arrived, his view was that was there was nothing wrong with Tatenda and that ‘he has a mental health issue, he’s just seeking attention’ When Tatenda heard these comments he requested “Please sir, do not argue with my parents as they are only trying to help me.’ The paramedic then sarcastically replied ‘Look he even talks!’ implying there was nothing wrong with Tatenda.

However once he had performed his medical checks he immediately found that Tatenda’s blood sugar was incredibly high. It was at that point that he called for an ambulance immediately. Once at Ealing Hospital it was clear his condition was life threatening.

Eventually, the hospital stabilised his condition. For a time it appeared as if he was making good progress and at one point he even managed to sit up and eat yoghurt with his mother.

Parents, now somewhat relived and reassured, left him around 10:30pm that night and made their way home. At 4:45am  on the 7^th March 2016 they received a phone call from the hospital stating that his condition had deteriorated. By the time the parents got to the hospital, staff were already trying to revive Tatenda. However at around 6:45am their wonderful son was declared dead.

The family were shocked and devastated. They however are in no doubt that Tatenda’s death was completely avoidable. They believe and I have come to the same conclusion, that had London Ambulance Service (LAS) responded professionally and properly assessed the seriousness of his condition, their son would be alive today.

They believe that NHS LAS operators repeated failure to correctly assess his condition, resulted in tragic delay. His treatment they believe, was informed by a stereotypical view of mental health patients and the fact that Tatenda was a black man, explains the total lack of professionalism and compassion that eventually resulted in a lethal delay in treatment, that contributed to their son's death.

The family are now awaiting pathology reports that will hopefully reveal the cause of death

Mrs. Praexedis Moyo-Kamasho said,

‘My sons death was entirely avoidable.

'As a trained medical professional I was appalled at the blaze and inhumane attitude of the NHS operator and the Paramedic who attended’

Mr. Cosmas Kamasho told me,

‘My son, Tatenda needed urgent medical attention and that was delayed by the incompetence and inhumanity of NHS Operators who consistently denied my son right to treatment and in doing so, grossly aggravated my son’s condition.

We want answers as to the cause of death and a full transcript of all the calls, that were made by the support worker and my wife.

The whole extended family and our friends are in deep shock. All we want is justice for our son and to prevent this from happening to others.”

The family have written to London Ambulance Service and outlining their anger and concerns. They demanded that Tatenda case be independently investigated and that the Ambulance Services be held to account.

The tardy and perfunctory response they received didn’t even offer the family that most basic of courtesies. The letter reproduced here was not even signed by a named individual.

There was neither simple acknowledgement of their son’s death nor an offer of condolence.

This is a shameful response that has simply added to the family’s acute distress.The family reached out to me to call for public support fore their search for answers and help raise awareness that so that it does not continue happening to someone else.

Mrs Pra Moyo-Kamasho is available and keen for press interviews.

.

Death of a Mad Black Woman: A reflection on the death of Sarah Reed

Written by Daniella Maison, Author of the N Word @ladymaison

It has long been the case that the maltreatment of black women is a constant component of colonial power. In the history of our arrival upon shores unknown, one single element was crucial to our   enslavement: the domination of the mind. After all, something that is dominated can be owned and thus controlled and manipulated.    

I have a word for you and a little something to say about it. Drapetomania. 

Drapetomania. This, was the name given to the ‘mental illness’ that enslaved Africans demonstrated whenever they endeavoured to escape the slave-masters. As far as white doctors in the 1860’s were concerned, black people were diagnosed as mentally ill if (when physically abused and tortured) they chose to escape. To abandon the shackles of enslavement showed a strength that had to be quashed in order for slavery to flourish. 

Muck-raking and mud-slinging is at the core of the Western approach to control. The cementing of the polarisation between black women and white has been expertly poured and placed, for centuries; slowly erecting the microstructure of black women and madness. 

The colonialist agenda took all of their fears upon first seeing us, cornfed them, beefed them up and set about propagating the hype. The hype was of the oversexed, rabidly murderous black man whom would rape white women. The other was of the crazy black woman. She was irrational, violent, angry, she could lash out at anytime with brute and manlike strength. 

It was the perfect stalking horse; to harm a woman might be cowardly and weak. To silence a Mad Black Woman? A stereotype developed and propagated for centuries. Well now that is an entirely different game. 

Allow me to tell you a true story. In 2003, a doting young mother lost her 9-month old baby girl.  The baby had suffered a short bout of illness before dying in a hospice with her loving parents at her side. 

In a bizarre turn of events she and her child's father were asked to  transport their deceased baby from Beckton Children's Hospice to a Woolwich undertakers in a taxi. I can only imagine the horror of that journey as she cradled the limp body of her beloved baby in her arms. It was a nightmare sojourn from which she would never fully return.  The torture of losing her child compounded by the memory of that harrowing journey haunted her relentlessly. 

She wouldn't be the first woman to have lost a part of her luminosity to bereavement. Throughout the next decade she would go on to suffer periodically from bouts of mental ill-health. 

Almost ten years on, this young woman, still reeling from the death of her girl child, was approached by police officers in a Uniqlo store who accused her of shoplifting. Cornered into a claustrophobic changing room area she lashed out defensively. A well-trained police officer would have seen the fear in this young ladies eyes. He might have utilised this training to reassure her. He might have seen  behind her defence mechanisms and communicate sensitively and with professionalism. 

Instead, Police Constable James Kiddie brutally dragged and punched her in a ferocious onslaught. He issued a series of punches to her head. You see, when Kiddie looked upon this young woman he did not see her vulnerability. He saw, a rabid animal; the consequence of centuries of patriarchal conditioning. Where others would see mildness, he saw hysteria. 

Let us for a moment look at that word.  Hysterical. It's a word with a deeply misogynist history, derived from the Latin hystericus (meaning "of the womb"). In days of old, this was a condition exclusive to women. It might send them frantically and uncontrollably cuckoo at any given moment. Why? Well of course it was due to an inherent dysfunction of the uterus (the excision of which is still called ahysterectomy). These etymologies have cemented a hatred for women as prone to unpredictable emotions and outbursts. Now, add into this patriarchal mixing bowl the word Black and something darker emerges. Something that must be put down. Stifled. Kicked. Punched. Erased. 

The assault had a profoundly negative impact on this young woman's already fragile state of mind. The horrific ordeal was caught on CCTV camera and resulted in the dismissal of PC Kiddie who was blithely handed 150 hours of community service and a fine. She in turn became frightened of tall, Caucasian men. At times she felt so vulnerable that she would return to the sanctuary  of her family home to sleep beside her cherished mother.

Such was her trauma at having been treated with such brutal malice, she spent phases of the proceeding years sectioned in hospital as she struggled to rebuild her life.

The story does not end there. It was whilst she was spending time as a patient detained under Section 3 of the Mental Health Act (the very act designed for the health and safety of human beings) in Maudsley hospital in October 2014 she suffered a sexual assault.

A born survivor, she fought off her attacker, injuring him. The staff called the police. 

They arrested her. 

If this concept is hard to understand then it is just one example of the vagaries of a mental health system designed from a western perspective and used to diagnose black people.

The fact that she had previously dared to challenge a violently Metropolitan Police Officer leads one to imagine she was arrested as an act of retribution. Or, to set an example. 

Mental health is still a taboo. It is still a dirty word despite what statistics may tell us. People still fear it makes us erratic, impossible to control, understand, a danger to others and themselves. 

It is still an effective brush to tarnish black women with; take 500 years of myth making, blend it carefully with attributes common (but far from exclusive to) black women - bind them - label with those magical words 'mental health' and what do you have? Something that must be put out. 

Held down. Locked away. Medicated. Hunted and billeted like an escaped zoo animal; pleasant to look at and be entertained by, but a danger to all society if unleashed without supervision.

We cannot survive in an environment of male sadism mostly because the psychological process is too abiding. 

On the 11th January 2016 Holloway Prison telephoned the young woman's family and informed them that their daughter was dead. They were told they couldn't see her body. They were told that she had 'strangled' herself whilst lying on her bed. Her name, was Sarah Reed. 

They say Sarah Reed 'strangled herself in her bed.' I say, the police began her lynching that day as they laid blows into her fragile head with hateful fists. It simply took two years for those blows to arrive at her cerebral cortex where it finally took hold and dulled her luminosity. It took two long years for the anguish of his heavy handed flogging to shackle itself around her weary heart and stop it's beat. 

I've no doubt in my mind that Kiddie enjoyed the spectacle of watching a fragile young woman cower at his feet. Most bullies do. 

I balked at every blow; raising my own hands defensively. I wept as they crouched down to cuff the hands that had held once her child's lifeless body. I laid down as she took her final sigh, vilified and swept aside. I felt her pain as my own. 

Drapetimania: In America, Tinisha Anderson, aged 37, died after her concerned mother called 911 while Anderson was experiencing a meltdown.  Officials say when officers tried to take Anderson to a treatment facility, she struggled and then went limp. The truth was  that police slammed her to the ground and put a knee in her back. Her death was ruled a homicide. 

Only in a world driven by the white patriarchy that established slavery could mental health be used as an subterfuge to lynch black women. Only in a racist world could black women be so easily discredited and discarded, their voices invalidated and unheard. 

Now is the time to speak loudly. Above the din and ballyhoo of a system that seeks to malign and crucify us. 

It is with pride and solidarity I will stand up and say in a loud and undimmed voice: I Am Sarah Reed. 

And so are you. 

Over a hundred years ago in 1918. Mary Turner was chased by an angry lynch mob of several hundred men. Eight months pregnant, she fled, driven by her maternal determination to protect her unborn child. The mob pursued her and found her the next morning. They took her to a stream, tied her ankles together and hung her from a tree upside down. They finished Mary off by riddling her body with bullets – to teach her a lesson.

Part 2: I Am Sandra Bland

Part 3: I Am Miriam Carey 

#SarahReed #SayHerName #BlackLivesMatter #WearRed

Sat 19th March 2016 

Register for the #BlackLivesMatter Bloc Here 

 #M19 National Demo; 

Meet at 11.30am at the foot of the stairs of All Souls Church, 2 All Souls Place, London, W1B 3DA 

Black Lives Matter - Refugees Welcome Here - Stand Up To Racism . 

Speakers at the demo will include Marilyn Reed, mother of Sarah Reed, Blaksox and BARAC UK.

This Bloc Is Organised by Black Activists Rising Against Cuts (BARAC) UK, BlakSox and the NUS Black Students Campaign . 

We oppose deaths at the hands of the State including the catalogue of failures by public authorities experienced by #sarahreed #sayhername , institutional racism, race discrimination in education and employment, the disproportionate impact of austerity and much more are all contributing to deepening racism faced by Black Workers, Students, Service Users and Communities. 

Join the Black Lives Matter Bloc on the demo, wear red clothing, bring home made solidarity placards, whistles, drums,horns. 

S