(C) OpenDemocracy
This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Anger at Met Police safer schools officer’s return after student’s wrongful arrest [1]
[]
Date: 2023-11
The Metropolitan Police has been criticised for allowing an officer to return to his school post after he wrongfully arrested a Black Muslim student and left her traumatised.
The arrest took place when the officer spotted the girl among a group of children playing with a nearby shop’s shutter after school. Her parents say she was manhandled by the officer, pushed into a nearby betting shop, handcuffed and arrested on suspicion of burglary.
Police sent 14 vehicles to the scene during the incident in May last year, but the girl was de-arrested after police found no crime had been committed. Her family also say the girl’s hijab was pulled off during the incident, which police deny, insisting it was “already partially removed before the incident began”.
The girl’s mother told openDemocracy that her daughter was left “traumatised” by the ordeal, and she was taken to hospital with bruising on her wrists. She said her daughter received no offer of support from the school or the police.
Help us uncover the truth about Covid-19 The Covid-19 public inquiry is a historic chance to find out what really happened. Make a donation
“She was in the middle of fasting, she was just doing her GCSEs, I don’t want what happened to my daughter to happen to any child,” she said.
The officer had to take time off from the school because of an injury sustained in the incident, according to the Met. But earlier this month, with no notice from the school or police, the girl's parents discovered the officer was back at the school after hearing about it from their other daughter who goes there.
At an emergency community meeting in Lambeth last week, hosted by the Alliance for Police Accountability (APA) campaign group, the girl’s mother said that no one warned the family the officer would be back.
“When he came back, my daughter said to me: ‘Mum, he came to our class and said: ‘I’ve been away for a while, and I’m back for good’,” she said.
While the officer has since been moved out of the school to another post, the girl’s parents are demanding to know why he returned at all following what was a highly traumatic experience for the then 16-year-old.
Police would not be pushed on why the officer returned to the school.
One man attending the meeting said: “I went to school in Lambeth, I grew up at a time when police officers weren’t allowed in schools… There’s no reason why this should be a thing now. This is over-policing of Black children.”
Lee Jasper, chair of the APA, agreed and cited the recent cases of Child Q and Child X, as examples of adultification – where the perception of some children, particularly Black children, as being more ‘grown up’ or ‘adult’, leads to a lack of appropriate safeguarding.
The parents of the schoolgirl demanded a meeting with the police, so they can “explain to everyone why he was reinstated”. They also called for the Met’s ‘safer schools’ officers to be abolished and for trauma counselling to be offered to children like their daughter who experience violence at the hands of police.
“There was no support for my daughter after she was arrested,” the girl’s mother said.
A formal complaint about the wrongful arrest was made to police in August last year and the Met confirmed last week that it is still being investigated by one of its professional standards units.
Lambeth police at the time said so many officers attended because the officer had “pressed his emergency button and requested more units for fear of being assaulted”. But the APA, which is supporting the family, said the children at the scene were simply trying to let the officer know the girl wasn’t guilty of burglary.
Earlier this month another community meeting was held in Hackney to discuss Child X, the 13-year-old Black boy who was rammed off his bike by police and held at gunpoint after a Met officer mistook his water pistol for a real firearm.
At the meeting, Hackney’s borough commander James Conway admitted that the Met is institutionally racist, and said he is trying to change things. But he came under fire from the audience for not doing enough.
“Our children are being violated and no one’s doing anything about it,” Jasper said.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/lambeth-metropolitan-police-violent-arrest-child-x-child-q/
Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/
