Acting With Impunity, The Beat Goes On

Deaths in police custody, prisons and from police shootings in Britain

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/arc/sarah_sept99.html

http://www.irr.org.uk/resources/custodyt.htm

http://www.ncrm.org.uk/campaigns/alder.html

http://www.injusticefilm.co.uk/

Censorship, you'd think it a thing of the past! The taboo of 30 years ago is standard stuff these days, visual culture saturated with what was once deviant sexuality. What hasn't changed much in that time is the regularity of deaths in police custody as well as in police car chases (another cultural staple), prisons, and from police shootings. Not just the regularity but the way in which the truth of what happened in each case is not allowed to interfere with the required exoneration of the police.

From last month The Police Federation has effectively stopped the showing of the film 'Injustice' made over 6 years with the support of the United Families and Friends (UFF) about such deaths in custody. The censorship has taken a novel form, the Federation has employed high-powered lawyers to slap last minute injunctions on cinemas ready to show the film with the threat of crippling financial penalties for the cinemas. So far cinemas have withdrawn the film with perhaps the realistic estimate that they will get hammered given the police's privileged role in the legal system. One or two clandestine showings of the film have taken place, showing perhaps where lies the real 'underground' in selectively modern Britain.

In 1970 two cases, that of David Oluwale a black man living on the streets in Leeds and Stephen McCarthy, a young Islington guy from a big Irish family brought it to the notice of people who might notice these things for one reason or another, that you could be arrested by the police and not come out of it alive. Sudden deaths are the subject of Inquests in Coroner's courts, part of the British legal system where archaic diversity and mumbo jumbo are essential to making responsibility a slippery thing as and when required by the state. Coroner's courts do have juries and, as in other parts of the legal system, it is usually only juries who can defend ordinary citizens against injustice. Within Coroner's courts however the balance of power in the court is with the Coroner himself, a state functionary.

So it was with the Inquest into the death of Stephen McCarthy where the Coroner pushed for a verdict of 'natural causes'. This after he had refused evidence Stephen's family wanted hearing; allowed the two arresting officers to stay in court throughout the hearing; and cautioned two eye-witnesses, the young guys who said they had seen the police ramming Stephen's head into the bus stop where they arrested him. Other features of these cases have been repeated over the years, the denial of calls for a Public Inquiry; police attacks on demonstrations calling for such a thing; and most of all systematic denigration of the victims by a well practiced police team 'leaking' untruths and half-truths to a largely compliant media.

In the decade 1970-80 274 people died in police custody or in hospital soon after being in such custody and the annual figures rose steeply in that time. The very statistic had to be dug out by concerned research, the Metropolitan Police did not record these figures until 1979. Two years later the organisation Inquest was formed to monitor such cases and give whatever support could be given to the families. This followed the death of Blair Peach, a teacher who died at an anti-racist demonstration broken up by the police's Special Patrol Group using a variety of official and unofficial coshes. (find another statistics here

This was not a poor, isolated alcoholic or police-hated black youth, but the inquest operated the same way. Crucially the police's own internal inquiry into his death (the Cass report) was disallowed as evidence. Such is the power of the Coroner. Twenty years on little has changed. It is still the case that while police and prison officer legal representation is generously funded by public money, legal aid is not available to the families of victims in Coroner's courts. In the case of Alton Manning, a black remand (that is, formally innocent) prisoner who died in the privately run Blakenhurst prison in December 1995 most of the documentary evidence was in the hands of lawyers representing the Home Office and United Kingdom Detention Services. As an Inquest briefing puts it, "They chose to deny access to much of the relevant documentation to the lawyers representing Mr Manning's family and the little which was forthcoming was through the Coroner." His death was the third 'restraint' death in UK prisons in the space of two months.

Other features of the case are all too familiar, indeed become a grotesque pattern of their own, black men and women dying when wrong or banned restraint techniques (both neckholds and face down restraint) have been applied. The inquest into Alton Manning's death finally took place in March 1998 and a courageous jury reached a unanimous verdict of Unlawful Killing. 12 times in the last decade juries have stood up to the power structure of the Coroner's Court and reached such a verdict. Not one police or prison officer has been convicted for their part in such killings. Only in three cases did it ever get to court. In the way stands another of those artfully independent bits of the legal system, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

- Shiji Lapite, a black man, died 1994; death from police neckhold restraint plus head kicking; a verdict of unlawful killing despite the coroner telling the jury they could only give this verdict if they were sure the criminal offence of manslaughter had been committed; no prosecution.

- Ibrahima Sey, a black man died 1996; death from face down police restraint; verdict of unlawful killing; no prosecution.

In the case of Alton Manning the CPS (only in Britain could it be a 'service') has 4 times decided that they will not prosecute any of the prison officers involved in his death: two times after a botched police investigation; then after the 'unlawful killing' verdict and now again in June of this year.

This last decision not to prosecute is truly disturbing because it follows a Divisional Court ruling in April 2000 that the explanation for the CPS's refusal to prosecute after the inquest jury's decision was 'unsustainable in law'. Worse, it follows a PR campaign from the CPS indicating that it has changed. This is a familiar tactic in how the law and order business deals with criticism. When for example the Chief Inspector of Prisons, now got rid of by the government delivered one damning report after another, you could be sure that the governor of the prison in question would be in the media next day, not dealing with the indictment made but saying that things had changed in the month or two since the Inspector's visit was made.

In the case of the CPS the 'change' was at first enforced and thus held the promise that it would be real. The previous Director of Public Prosecutions, Dame Barbara Mills was shamed into resignation in 1998 following her inability in the High Court to justify refusal to prosecute 3 separate cases, 2 of which followed 'unlawful killing' verdicts, and the subsequent Butler report into CPS decision-making which appeared to put in some safeguards for those killed in custody. Since then in easy-ride media interviews the present DPP David Calvert-Smith admitted to pockets of racism in the CPS but said that he was dealing with it, the familiar technique that is of, that-was-then-this-is now.

The Alton Manning decision gives the lie to this. After this year's refusal to prosecute by the CPS, the Manning family's solicitor, Raju Bhatt commented:

Brazen, the CPS is brazen just as it has been in witholding evidence in numerous miscarriages of justice, for Alton Manning's case does not stand alone this year. Christopher Alder, another black man, a decorated ex-paratrooper died in the custody suite of Queens Gardens Police Station, Hull in April 1998. This time there was video evidence of this 37 year old dying there, after having been arrested at a hospital where he'd been taken for treatment. In August 2000 after 7 weeks of evidence, the Inquest jury delivered a verdict of 'unlawful killing', this following the CPS twice having refused to prosecute following a botched police investigation. On April 9th it was announced that the Hull police had tried to have the inquest jury's verdict overturned by the High Court and failed. The family solicitor Ruth Bundey commented:

Some hope! Just 16 days later the CPS announced that the Hull officers would not face manslaughter charges as implied by the jury's verdict. And yet, the significance of such verdicts cannot be overestimated given all the pressures exerted not to give them as in the case of Glen Howard for example where the Coroner left the choice between two verdicts only, open or accidental death. Even here the jury ignored his command that they should make no comment either and ruled that excessive restraint and lack of medical care contributed to Glen Howard's death. Given also the fact that police officers are not obliged to answer any question that might incriminate them and may claim anonymity.

So far then it would seem that the report into the CPS's failings have made little difference. Neither has the Human Rights Act of October 2000 to which the British government was dragged kicking and screaming. Its sole claim to have tackled injustice was the inquiry into the investigation of Stephen Lawrence's murder and the bringing to light of institutional racism in the police. Its recommendations-the McPherson Report-have been chipped away at ever since by the police and their media allies, and some ignored, that families at inquests receive legal aid in order to be represented for example. Britain is a far less racist society than in 1970 despite particular pockets, and yet the pattern of an over-preponderance of black men and women dying in custody continues. Other features are repeated in a depressing procession.

-The guidance on restraint techniques for example, continues to be ignored when it really matters, that is when someone loses their life.
-The less spectacular cases, the many deaths of people with drink or drugs problems are invariably poor and isolated.
-And there are the institutions, the ones that come up as horror stories over the years. Ashford, a prison for young offenders which had such a bad name for suicides that it became Feltham, in which the number of suicides is even greater.
-Stoke Newington police station for example, the scene of deaths from Aseta Simms, in 1971; Michael Ferrieira in 1978; Colin Roach in '83 right through to Sarah Thomas in the late 90s, all of them black people.

Most distasteful of all is the frequent attempts to smear the victim a tactic which goes across the board. In the 1970s, Stephen Waldorf was shot six times through the window of his car by a policeman believing him to be a criminal called Dave Martin, and battered over the head with the same gun for good measure. Stories were put out by the police that he was a drug dealer, or a Dave Martin secret accomplice. Stephen Waldorf fortunately did survive and got out-of-court settlement but the police were legally cleared on the grounds of self-defence. Aseta Simms, the black woman who died in Stoke Newington police station had head bruises consistent with having been beaten but the media took the police story that she was a drunk. Similarly in an almost unreported case in 1984 of Michael Shenley killed by a speeding police car engaged in a trivial pursuit with no lights flashing was said by the police to be drunk when his friends said this was not so. And again, just a few weeks ago in 2001, the same story was put out about a young man knocked down in Chelsea in similar circumstances.

This smearing of the victim is one part of what is truly frightening about nearly all the cases where the police or prison officers have been involved in a death, It Is Never Their Fault. Both are persistent media whingers, what a hard time they have and nothing is ever their fault. After their shooting of the innocent Stephen Waldorf, the Police Federation argued that 'armed officers should have a form of legal protection or indemnity from prosecution'. 25 years later the CPS's decision in the case of Harry Stanley, shot dead in Hackney for carrying a chair leg- and investigated as grim farce by a police force itself under investigation-amounted to saying that if the police Believe a man is armed they will inevitably have to end up shooting that person. This despite the fact that they had plenty of time to ascertain that Harry Stanley was not armed.

This refusal to take responsibility for their actions, to say like a caricature cockney criminal of yesteryear, it wasn't me guv, does not sit well with the British government's interminable lectures on how in return for our rights citizen's have responsibilities. Nor does the consistent refusal to set up a public inquiry into deaths in custody (with the Coroner's Inquest always there to say that such an Inquiry is not needed) sit well with the same government lecturing Third World countries on the need for transparency and the rule of law. Instead the Crown Prosecution Service amplifies the police's attitude and must, they are only human it is aid of the police in other circumstances, give then a feeling of being able to act with impunity. This was best described by Donald Douglas after the death of his brother Brian, a black man, in May 1995 after being hit on the head in London by police using the then new American styled long handled baton:

Since then we have had the McPherson report but the case of Roger Sylvester is like some ghastly paradigm of the whole range injustice described.

- Roger Sylvester, a black man died January 1999; death from police restraint; CPS refusal to bring criminal charges; suppression of documentary evidence; no legal aid for the family; further refusal to disclose documentary evidence by the 'reforming' David Calvert Smith; smearing of the victim's character, stories to the press to the effect that Roger was a mentally ill drug user. This was nor true, nor the wholly police fed story in The Times newspaper that he was a crack user.

Roger's family however are not letting it go, both with their own website and as participants with the other brave families fighting for justice in making the film 'Injustice'. The importance of this now clandestine film cannot be overstated. As with so many miscarriages of justice the political will to do anything has to be created. Alton Manning's sister made so much happen and in the end nothing happened. It is a horrible irony that Raju Bhatt the family solicitor should describe the situation so well at a time when it looked as though justice would be done, that is when they had won a judicial review.

Given this situation, all British citizens should feel grateful to those who have fought for justice for their dead relatives and for the makers of 'Injustice'.