Crisis Unfolds: The Shocking Surge in Britain's Policing of Innocent Black Children
The news that there has been a 13% increase in the last year in the stop and searches of Black children will come as both horrifying and devastating news to many in Britain's Black communities and beyond.
Recently published Home Office data revealed that in the last year, we have seen a massive ramping up of racial profiling and targeting black children by British police forces across the UK and, in particular, London at the hands of the Metropolitan Police.
And the terrible news is these figures are rising, and child arrests are becoming increasingly violent.
In addition to this worrying new trend, London-based youth charity Redthread has publically expressed its concerns after youth workers reported seeing increased incidents of black children, particularly black boys, arriving in hospital A& E departments after suffering from Taser injuries, head injuries, memory loss and trauma resulting from violent arrests.
The majority of these arrests have led to no further action. In other words, most children are innocent of any crime.
Recently published Home Office statistics indicate that out of 100,000 children stopped by police nationally last year, 20% were black youth, a stark overrepresentation given they constitute only 6% of the general population.
Alarmingly, nearly 90% of these young individuals, subjected to the indignity and distress of racial profiling under the guise of 'intelligence-led' policing, were subsequently found to be innocent.
Figures courtesy of @gmhales on X
According to a report discussed in November 2023 at the newly created London Policing Board, over 70 children required hospital treatment, including plastic surgery for dog bites and taser injuries following violent, aggressive arrests that caused a range of injuries and severe trauma.
The political context.
The very year that saw the cases of Child Q, X and A (a ten-year-old Black girl tasered by the Met) alongside the excoriating publication of the Casey Review, the response from officers on the ground was to target more Black children.
That message from the ranks was crystal clear; they gave us the metaphorical middle finger; despite the warm words and rhetoric of the Commissioner and statements by the Mayor of London about 'tackling racism in the Met,' the objective response is clearly written in these disturbing figures.
In short, Met officers have decided the best way to respond to widespread concerns about their proactive racist practice is to ramp up the targeting of Black children.
The consequence is that we now see a new development in the nature and scale of systemic racism in operational policing. That is the transparent extension of the type of vicious systemic racism and heavy-handed police brutality generally reserved for adults, which is now being extended to our children.
Think about that for one minute.
OK, let's keep it moving.
The Met is a police force, not a service. Referring to a systemically racist institution as a 'Service' is a total misnomer that fails to accurately reflect the reality of their oppressive policing of London's Black communities.
The term 'Service' implies a commitment to public welfare and safety, a standard that is starkly contradicted by the systemic racism and brutality embedded within the culture of the Metropolitan Police.
The stone-cold truth and their own figures prove this the Metropolitan Police Force oppresses black communities rather than protecting them and discriminates rather than serves.
London's Black communities should redefine the Metropolitan Police as the ' Metropolitan Police Force.' This encapsulates the harsh, bitter truth and the oppressive nature of the policing of London's Black communities
Publically redesignating the Met as a force, not a service, acknowledges the harrowing experiences of those on the receiving end of their racist policing practices and serves as a constant reminder of the urgent need for systemic reform within this institution.
The Met doesn't care about your concerns.
We all know the horrendous cases of Child Q, Child X and Child A and the public outcry that followed. Yet here we are today, with these new Home Office figures confirming that what we are witnessing is a very worrying and growing trend: the criminalisation of black children being subject to racial profiling and violent arrests.
The Alliance for Police Accountability (APA) highlighted the issue of adultification and the Case of Child X late last year, revealing the horrific armed hard stop that saw a 13-year-old schoolboy rammed off his scooter and held at gunpoint. At an APA public meeting (held at the IDPAD Centre in Hackney, the family's home borough), we saw a packed venue and a furious crowd demanding justice and accountability. Yet despite widespread and overwhelming public condemnation – not a single officer has been disciplined regarding this Case.
Things are getting worse.
This important Hackney public meeting, followed by another APA pubic meeting among the Somalia communities of Lambeth at Stockwell Community Centre (where a 14-year-old Muslim girl was aggressively arrested outside her school by a School Police Officer) both gave a solid mandate for the APA urgently expose and address this critical issue. Parents at both meetings were angry and demanded action. The APA is serving the community and has decided to take action.
According to data provided by the Metropolitan Police, 31 children between 11-17 years old required hospitalisation for police-related injuries across London in 2023. However, this figure was immediately challenged by Redthread, who alone recorded 24 child injuries after the use of police force in the same period at just eight London hospitals. The conclusion is clear - we can have no confidence that the Met's figures capture the actual reality.
We suspect there is a massive underreporting of the violent arrests of all children, particularly Black children, who are hospitalised due to the use of police force, the vast majority of whom are guilty of no crime. Redthread youth workers reported seeing increased numbers of children arrive at hospitals with injuries such as police dog bites and other injuries received during arrest and other interactions with the police. These included head injuries, fractures, memory loss and wounds requiring plastic surgery.
The significant point to note is that this disproportionality has increased over the last two years, at the same time as public concerns over previous child arrests and the publication of the Casey Review. Black communities are being policed by the worst nightmares and stereotypical anti-Black assumptions of serving racist police officers and commented upon by a largely unrepresented and hostile press.
The Talk.
One aspect of the lived Black experience that is not well understood is the extent to which black parents are forced to provide survival techniques and advice to their children in the event they encounter aggressive and racist policing.
Baroness Casey, in her searing and devastating report into police racism, misogyny, and homophobia, was at pains to point out to predominantly white audiences, in many subsequent interviews and speeches, this little-known (outside of Black communities) fact.
Until she spoke with black parents, she was entirely unaware of the realities of how black families are forced to equip their children with the skills necessary to successfully navigate the realities of systemic racism in policing. There comes a time as children approach adolescence when Black parents will sit down with their sons and daughters and have "the talk."
This coming-of-age 'talk' involves equipping their children with the knowledge, tactics, and skills to de-escalate an encounter with racist police officers. Is this really the vision of a multicultural Britain we want to see? One where our children are increasingly seen as 'fair game' by a predatory police force that refuses to accept the toxic reality of their profoundly dysfunctional policing culture
It's less than a year since Baroness Casey published her damning review highlighting what the black community has known for the last five decades that the Metropolitan Police Service is a systemically racist, misogynist, and homophobic organisation. We would add to that list Institutional islamophobia.
What is crystal clear is the persistence of police racism leads us to conclude that racism is secreted into the very sequencing of the Met's organisational DNA.
What the Baroness Casey Review revealed was the reality of a racial hierarchy and a bruising, dominant and deeply dysfunctional policing culture that infects every aspect of the organisation.
And let's be clear about the broader dynamics at play: it took the brutal murder of a woman, Sarah Everards (whose grandfather was a Jamaican from Saint Elizabeth), by a serving police officer, followed by the vicious policing of the Sarah Everard memorial at Clapham Common, and finally the intervention of another white woman Baroness Casey, to inform the British public, of precisely the very same things Black communities have been telling the powers that be for the last 50 years.
London accounted for almost a third (32%) of stop and searches of children in England and Wales. Baroness Casey was right when she said stopping and searching by force needed "a fundamental reset". She also highlighted research that shows "larger numbers of Black people felt traumatised and humiliated by the experience of stop and search than other ethnic groups."
Black Trauma Matters.
Imaging the trauma experienced by Black children, their families and the broader community of repeated, aggressive and, on occasion, violent policing by a hostile force?
Police racism is deep, persistent and consistent. History demonstrated that within the beating heart of the culture of policing lies an unrelenting river of racism infecting every aspect of operational policing, stop and search, road traffic stops, drug possession, rape, murder investigations, Case after wretched Case has been publicly exposed and driven home the terrifying point that we are subject to the soft apartheid and devastating outcomes of police service that has effectively demonised Black adults and children as being inherently criminal and dangerous.
Racial profiling requires a closed system mindset and is just one aspect of a systemic culture of racism. It's a self-reinforcing belief system where disproportionate focus on Black people leads to disproportionate stop and searches and increased arrests that inevitably leads, somewhat ironically, to the reinforcement of police prejudicial stereotypes that justify a continued disproportionate focus on Black people. Psychologically, police officers have, in other words, executed, rationalised and justified their innate prejudice as 'just doing my job."
Policing culture.
Such is the ferocity of the culture of policing (and all greenlit by the stubborn refusal of the Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley to admit his force is systemically racist) that the subculture or what was once known as 'canteen culture' simply eats race equality policies for breakfast, followed by sexual equality for lunch, and a late snack on those tasty LGTBQ policies. Such woke policies are despised mainly and ignored by the massed ranks of PCs.
Furthermore, we insist that the Metropolitan Police and the Mayor directly consult with London's Black communities. The aim is to develop stringent, transparent, and fair protocols governing the strip search of children, particularly in sensitive cases where intimate body parts are exposed. Such measures are vital to protect our youth's dignity and rights and prevent the misuse of police authority.
Your support in sharing this article and endorsing the petition is invaluable. It is a step towards ensuring justice and upholding the rights of our children and towards building a society where the safety and dignity of every child are paramount, irrespective of race or background.
To this end, the APA will also host a "Policing and the Black Child Conference" (hat tip to Diane Abbott MP- if you know, you know) in May 19th 2024 in partnership with the University of East London's Peel Centre on Policing one year on from the publication of the Casey Review. Contact us if you want to join our APA-focused youth working group developing the conference's theme.
Conference details will be announced soon.
Follow APA for more info.
