In 2019 on the hottest day of that year, a black man lay dying on the streets of Brixton. That man was Rastaman and severe asthmatic Ian Taylor. On police bodycam video played at this Inquest earlier this year, Ian is repeatedly heard crying out the terminal words, “I can't breathe. It’s worthy of note that Ian died a full year before George Floyd’s murder, and this desperate plea became a global demand for justice. Not once was there any reference here in the UK media to Ian's tragic death for reasons I shall explain shortly.
The Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) investigation report published recently into the controversial and preventable death of Ian Taylor has remarkably determined that there is effectively no case to answer regarding Lambeth Police Officer's treatment of our brother. Ian, a 54-year-old Rastaman, died a brutal and unnecessary death on 29th July Coldharbour Lane in 2019, surrounded by a callous group of Lambeth Police Officers who mocked him as he lay dying.
Arrested on suspicion of being involved in a fight, Ian was found lying on the pavement outside Brixton Domino Club, Coldharbour Lane, and immediately handcuffed. The circumstances surrounding Ian’s death have become a lightning rod for change that demands police accountability and radical change.
At the time of Ian's death, Lambeth Police issued a press release stating that Ian had died because of an assault, and subsequently, two local black men were arrested on suspicion of his murder. Unbelievably, those investigations are still ongoing even though Lambeth Police knew at the time that the likely cause of Ian’s death was nothing to do with an assault.
Why would Lambeth Police put out such false and misleading information? Some would say this was a cynical media diversion tactic to shift the initial focus away from the Officers and ensure that the local community didn’t discover what had happened for fear of a community outcry and public backlash.
As was recently revealed dramatically, at a recent Brixton public meeting attended by Ian’s Taylors family that I helped organise and co-chair, not only was the community kept in the dark at the time about what happened to Ian, but so were local Councillors, MP Helen Hayes, the Leader of the Council, and the media.
What has become abundantly clear in the subsequent period since Ian’s death and his Inquest is that Lambeth Police decided to keep the facts from the public, elected officials and the media at the time. They failed to inform, brief, and reassure or be accountable to the public in any meaningful way. That is a severe and catastrophic error of judgment.
When the Police engage in media manipulation and fail to be accountable to local communities and elected officials, that is a grave matter. Community confidence in policing, consultation and local accountability are vital cornerstones of any effectively functioning democracy.
As we can see, the initial Lambeth Police Service briefing on Ian’s death bears no relation to this incident's facts. Despite the truth being revelated shining a light on the culpability of Lambeth officers for Ian's death, Lambeth Police have, to date, chosen neither to apologise nor publicly correct this deeply misleading police briefing.
Ian's death was not caused by injuries caused by anyone else. His avoidable death was a direct result of police inaction. An inquest later determined that Ian died due to an acute asthma attack and dehydration on the hottest day of 2019, with temperatures well above 30 degrees. His asthma was aggravated by the stress of his arrest and the fact that he was seriously dehydrated.
Had he been taken to hospital, there is no doubt in my mind that Ian would be alive today.
When the first officers arrived on the scene, Ian was already on the ground and struggling to breathe; the officer's evidence stated that on arrival ‘.… I could see the man on the floor appeared to be in pain and some distress”.
Despite this, Officers placed Ian in handcuffs within two minutes of arrival. So, there was no doubt that the Officers were aware that Ian was in severe pain and was showing signs of acute distress.
Ian repeatedly asked officers to find his asthma pump. Although the IOPC report indicates officers did conduct a primary search through his jacket and called an ambulance, they continually mocked Ian’s insistence that he couldn’t breathe and refused to give him water; they laughed, accused Ian of faking distress, and watched him while he lay dying.
His Inquest found Ian to have died from an acute asthma attack and severe dehydration. They could have added ‘and the damaging effects of unacknowledged institutional racism in policing.’ Coroner Andrew Harris was shocked that police had not considered driving Mr Taylor to a nearby hospital, given they were aware of severe ambulance delays that day.
Add to this horrific scenario that he died on the hottest day of the year, with temperatures well above 30 degrees, surrounded by seven Lambeth police officers. Ian was pleading for his life, handcuffed, lying prone and in the searing heat. While Ian lay struggling for breath and dying of thirst, surrounded by officers mocking him, one officer took out a fresh bottle of water, drank some and poured the rest over her head and as was revealed at his Inquest, she didn’t offer Ian a single drop.
Despite the recent IOPC finding, the Coroner was sufficient concerned that he referred a police officer who was recorded as dismissing Mr Taylor’s complaints of being unable to breathe to his sergeant as “blah, blah, blah ... all a load of nonsense” to the police watchdog for investigation. The IOPC has dismissed his concerns.
The IOPC report states that an officer responded to Ian, “you can breathe because you are breathing, but you need to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, ok? I am helping you.’ Ian, in response, repeatedly says, “I’m dying,” and complains of being hot and thirsty. One of the seven officers in attendance was heard on camera saying, “…ignore him. He’s playing the poor me card.”
Just consider that as Ian lay dying, repeatedly saying, “I can’t breathe,” Lambeth Police officers stood around and made jokes.
Body-worn video shows the officers eventually took him out of the sun, pulled his jacket down, and stated they provided him with some shade by ‘positioning themselves to block out the sun.’
That’s certainly one interpretation, but the police body cam videos available to the IOPC show a completely different story. Given the video evidence, I find some of the IOPC finding perverse and make little to no sense in the real-world policing experience of London's Black communities or the expected professional policing standards.
As Police waited for an ambulance, officers were constantly made aware of massive delays to ambulance services on that fateful day. Yet, despite being just five minutes away from Kings College hospital, not one of the seven officers decided to take Ian to A&E despite his deteriorating condition. Ian was eventually placed in the back of a police car. There are four minutes of missing body cam video of Ian in the Police car, and they happen to be the last four minutes that preceded the end of his life. Filming resumes seeing the officer's frantic efforts to save Ian's life, who had stopped breathing, leading to blind panic among officers.
This unbelievable response from officers should have been instantly dismissed as nonsense by the IOPC. How can professionally trained police officers claim that they actively believed they were not allowed to transport people requiring medical treatment to the hospital when faced with such an extraordinary situation? Even more concerning is that the IOPC appears to have accepted this explanation at face value. This cannot be a reasonable conclusion given the available evidence of camera footage and police interviews.
In stark contradiction to their finding that there is no case to answer, the IOPC report clearly states that police officers can and, in fact, regularly transport suspects/members of the public to hospital.
“MPS policy does not prohibit the transport of detainees to hospital in a police vehicle but does make it clear that such a decision will only be appropriate in exceptional circumstances and at the discretion of the police driver.’ Despite officers not following their policy and transporting Ian to A&E, the IOPC found no evidence of misconduct on their part.
Notwithstanding the above, the IOPC investigation report starkly contrasts the galling evidence revealed at Ian Taylors Inquest, where the Officer's evidence demonstrated the callousness and shocking levels of unprofessionalism.
The Inquest findings highlight the mediocre quality of this IOPC investigation and its inexplicable conclusions. The Ian Taylor Inquest shone a bright light on Lambeth police officers who failed in their duty to save his life. They could have transported Ian to the hospital and should have done so straight away. This is lethal incompetence if one accepts the officer's testimony, and I, for one, do not.
This alleged incompetence cost an innocent man his life.
Nor do I accept that this is a matter of better training for police officers. I assert that Police officers shouldn't need professional training to ensure they offer basic human empathy and compassion to a person in distress. Had just one of them done so, their intervention could have saved Ian's life.
This IOPC report concludes that the officers did nothing wrong, suggesting that just one officer be given “words of advice and offered reflective practice.”
Local MP Helen Hayes, who also attended the Brixton meeting on Ian’s death, subsequently complained to the IOPC following the Corner's comments that called for one of the officers who failed to offer Ian any assistance to be referred on disciplinary charges to the IOPC. Interestingly, the Coroner, the local MP, the Council, and the local community all disagree with the IOPC's conclusion that there is no case to answer.
In many ways, this scenario reminds me of Rashan Charles's case. A young Black man was choked to death by a police officer in 2017; all caught in the full horrific video glare.
Back then, if you recall, the IOPC investigated, and we were told not to believe our lying eyes and accept that Rashans death was lawful and proportionate.
Like hell it was. As in the case of Rashan, these woeful IOPC conclusions on the end of Ian Taylor are, I believe, fundamentally respect for the rule of law and police officers in general. In both cases, the UK authorities have tried to bury their harrowing evidence and protect the police officers involved.
And we all know why.
The elephant in the room is the continually denied existence and reality of a toxic culture of institutional racism. A culture that strips both police officers of everyday compassion and black people of our humanity. Institutional racism dehumanises police officers and black people alike. The consequences are the most dramatic loss of Black public confidence in the long and turbulent relations between the Met and London’s Black communities.
And that's why these IOPC conclusions are more than just an embarrassing whitewash. They are a damning indictment of the Met institutional racism that has had the generalised effect of oppressing and criminalising London's Black communities for decades.
This IOPC whitewash of Ian Taylor's death sends a clear message to the Met and London's Black communities that the culture of institutional racism will be allowed to continue with impunity. It also reinforces the view that black lives don't matter, an approach and sentiment that can only have catastrophic consequences for London.
In releasing this report in the middle of August, the IOPC could also be accused of cynical media manipulation, choosing to publish during the holiday period. Given the deeply tarnished public reputation of both the IOPC and the Met, there remains a series of essential questions and contradictions between the officer's evidence to the IOPC, and the evidence heard at the Inquest.
Cllr Mahamed Hashi, Lambeth’s Cabinet Member for Safer Communities, who was in attendance at the recent Brixton meeting, said in response to the IOPC report,
“Ian Taylor’s death has traumatised his family and shocked the local community. That pain was laid bare during a community meeting at Lambeth Town Hall in July when his relatives spoke with searing honesty and clarity about their tragic loss.
“They also spoke of their extreme concern about how the information had been shared and how this had made a terrible situation even worse for them. This shock and anger were reflected across the room as others in our community spoke about their own experiences and reflected on what had happened.
“This latest announcement is profoundly disappointing and makes very clear that much more must be done to change the culture of policing. At Lambeth Council, we are already working hard to improve public accountability regarding policing the borough, whether around stops and searches or how the police engage with local communities following incidents in their area.
“But it must be backed up by the Met responding to being put in special measures by developing new and better ways of engaging with communities, becoming more transparent and more reflective of the diverse city it seeks to serve.”
Speaking at the Ina Taylor community meeting last month, MP for Dulwich and West Norwood, Helen Hayes, condemned the “gross failure” of responding officers over Mr Taylor’s death.
She also called upon the then-acting police head, Sir Stephen House, to investigate what role “racism may have played in the way that Ian Taylor was treated”.
Chief Superintendent Colin Wingrove, the most senior officer in Lambeth, repeated an “unreserved apology” to Mr Taylor’s family for the officer’s comments, saying they lacked “care, compassion and respect”.
“When we deal with any incident, especially when someone needs our help, we expect the highest professional standards and care, treating people with dignity and respect,” he said.
“This is what the public rightly expects from their police service, and I am sorry we did not meet those high standards in every respect when responding to Mr Taylor.”
He acknowledged the impact on Mr Taylor’s friends and family and said his officers would work with them and the wider community to respond to their concerns and “rebuild trust and confidence”.
The Mayor of London.
There is growing political consensus across the capital on the need for the Met to tackle systemic discrimination. The Mayor of London reported in the Pink News speaking on the current Met crisis, and former Commissioner Cressida Dick said
“One of the reasons why I lost confidence in the previous commissioner was my lack of confidence in her plans to address the two big issues – addressing the systemic racism, sexism, homophobia and misogyny, but also the trust and confidence required from our public when you police by consent,”
Lambeth.
The problem for Supt Wingrove is that in the two years since becoming borough Commander, the general public, specifically Lambeth Black communities' trust and confidence in Lambeth police have collapsed. Under his watch, Lambeth has the highest recorded incidence of race complaints, the lowest level of Black trust and confidence, and the highest level of race disproportionality across all use of controversial police powers of any borough in London and of any Police service in the UK.
Further, he has allowed the most catastrophic deterioration of police accountability forums in the borough. As public surveys of policing satisfaction in Lambeth have shown, throughout Wingrove's time at Lambeth, both rates of race disproportionality have risen whilst the quality of community relations and public confidence in policing have all seriously deteriorated under his command.
Restoring our trust and confidence in Lambeth is predicated on the existence of robust and publicly accountable police-community forums. One of the immediate legacies of Ian's untimely death is that the Council is fully committed to addressing these controversial policing issues and re-establishing rigorous and practical community police accountability structures in the borough. This comes not a moment too soon.
The Met is now in deep crisis and has been placed in special measures by its own regulatory body due to its failure to acknowledge and address the issues of what, under former Commissioner Cressida Dick, became a virulent and resurgent culture of institutionalised racism and discrimination.
The National Police Chief Council’s recently published Race Action Plan and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, have both prioritised tackling systemic racism as a matter of urgency,
The return of genuine police accountability in Lambeth can’t come soon enough. It's too late for Ian Taylor, but we can ensure sufficient scrutiny and public accountability to minimise the extent to which such a sad and avoidable death could happen again.
On the issue of police accountability and tackling racism, the challenges for the Met, the Mayor and Government are existential and critical. With the quality of senior officers and borough commanders at the Met today, I’m not sure the Met has the commitment, resources or personnel or skills necessary to ever recover fully.
