This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
by Roxy Legane (NPMP and Kids of Colour)
Nobody ‘deserves’ to be tasered. However, responses to a recent video of a Black man being tasered in Greater Manchester, in front of his young son, show that many believe otherwise. What became clear following the incident on Wednesday 6th May is how progress remains bound by a society that relishes in physical and emotional punishment for ‘crime’. The racist and classist attitudes of the police force are well documented, but what becomes shocking is the reminder that sections of the public accept that someone’s actions could warrant violence, without consideration for whether this will produce a better society. What follows as a result is the police force’s ability to weaponise such acceptance, consciously choosing to exploit the public’s support for physical and emotional harm to over-police and use violence without scrutiny.
Public acceptance of the notion that some people deserve to be subject to state violence is the force’s most meaningful ally. Following the incident involving the man and child in Manchester, Greater Manchester Police were quick to release a list of the man’s charges (concerningly, including his full name and address). His ‘deserved it’ list. It then evoked its expected reaction on social media, acting as a ledger of justification for the use of a potentially fatal weapon, which was used seemingly without warning; in close proximity to a child; and at a petrol station, an environment in which such weapons are a greater risk.
That ‘deserved it’ list is typical police protocol. Today and historically, it works perfectly to help the institution avoid accountability because we live in a country that largely stands by the idea that if the police can ‘justify’ it, it is acceptable, and any misdemeanour gives the police power to do what they want.
When Northern Police Monitoring Project led an event in Moss Side in 2019 on deaths after police contact, there were clear similarities between each speaker’s story, and one specific similarity was key. From Lisa Cole, Janet Alder, Gail Grainger and Germaine Phillips, we heard the same message and the same warning to others: If this happens to you, the police will take the narrative out of your hands almost immediately.
That ‘deserved it’ list will be released to the media almost instantly. They will begin to defame the character of your loved one, to ensure that before you have your chance to speak of the intimate moments you shared, the kindness they had, the things they enjoyed, the public will know them as someone else. The person the public will come to know will be someone you never did: a dehumanised construction, underpinned by ideas of criminality, and no doubt by their race and class. To this day, many will still argue Mark Duggan ‘deserved it’ because of who he was presented to be.
But the ‘if this happens to you’ warnings often land on deaf ears. What is interesting about the way these incidences and following constructions work is the ability for people to remove themselves from any proximity to behaviours shared on the ‘deserved it’ list. Reading through the list of charges shared by GMP regarding the man they tasered, how could people be so certain that this would never be someone they knew? While recognising the risk here in being seen to ‘condone’ certain behaviours, the purpose is to be realistic and eradicate the idea of a flawless majority.
Some public reactions to the list could lead you to believe that every other citizen in the UK has never known someone to have ‘one more pint’ before driving, to do 46mph in a 40mph zone, to not have car insurance, or to leave their home unnecessarily during COVID-19. As videos emerge online of people coming together to conga line in celebration of VE day, clearly breaking social distancing rules, you wonder how many of these individuals would say ‘well he should not have been travelling’. As for those shouting ‘but he resisted’, how many times must Black people, people of colour and campaigners against police violence justify the fear and anger – a product of over-policing – that leads to said ‘resistance’?
The inability of many to see themselves or those they know in a similar scenario is of course significantly aided by race and privilege. In many ways, the ‘deserved it’ list is just bonus validation to justify police action, because for so many, the ability to see this man was Black was enough to wake the racism settled in so many of us (people of colour included) that affirms a base view of ‘he deserved whatever followed’.
A base view supported by a society, with help from its media and politicians, that labels Black men as inherently ‘risky’, consequently framing your reaction to them. Race and class are strong groundings for the ‘deserved it’ list that the police are quick to reveal, they are companions that truly validate one another to construct the notion that this man was ‘taser-worthy’. The police emerge unscathed.
Surrounding this case, the unforgiving rhetoric of sections of the public was a stark reminder of the critical groundwork that needs to be done to shift opinion on ‘crime and punishment’, if we are to make progress. It feels, at times, that those who stand firmly by the belief that no one deserves to be tasered, are a much smaller group of advocates.
That those who want accountability for the fact that a taser is 8 times more likely to be used against a Black person than a White person are fighting an uphill struggle. Those standing on that side will always be vindicated for stating that what an individual has done is, in many ways, unimportant. It is separate to our anger which stems from living in a state in which “wrong-doing” legitimates police violence, where the police are near immune from public criticism, and that the police are armed with weapons that can kill. A state in which the police force is institutionally racist, a key factor in deciding who is framed as more ‘deserving’ of harm.
This article was originally published in Ceasefire Magazine.
Not long since videos of a Sikh schoolboy being bullied went viral, the inquest of Shukri Abdi drew to an end today. Playground racism is still not taken seriously, despite its tragic consequences. Whether from more recent cases, or those as far back as Ahmed Iqbal Ullah, it is clear that lessons have not been learnt.
The way Shukri Abdi’s case played out highlights the clear inequality and bias present in the current system. Shukri’s family were denied interpreters at the police station and her mother, Zamzam Ture, has accused the police of institutional racism in their handling of her daughter’s death.
Over the summer, Shukri’s name rang out in cities across the globe. As heightened awareness shone a light on the failings of the criminal justice system, we saw many of those failings reflected in how the police investigated Shukri’s death and treated her family.
We send our love and solidarity to Shukri’s family, all families impacted by violence and racism and to all those pursuing justice. No justice, no peace.
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
bySisters Uncut, MCR
During the pandemic, we have all felt trapped inside our homes. But for survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, this prospect is horrifying. For many, staying indoors means confinement with those who harm them. A survey by Women’s Aid reported that 67% of survivors currently experiencing domestic abuse say it has worsened since Covid-19 reached the UK and 72% say their abuser now has more control over their life. Refuge, the UK’s largest domestic violence charity, reported a 700% increase in referrals in a single day. Local specialist services have reported that women are waiting longer to reach out for help—resulting in high-risk situations with dire consequences. These statistics are unlikely to even scratch the surface.
Meanwhile, a new Domestic Abuse Bill is finally in the ‘report’ stage. This step precedes the third and final reading in the House of Commons. And Sisters Uncut Manchester have been asking the question: does this Bill go far enough to protect survivors?
We are the Manchester branch of Sisters Uncut: a direct-action feminist group founded in 2014 in response to the murderous cuts in funding for domestic abuse services. As intersectional feminists, we understand that an individual’s experience of violence is affected by interconnecting and mutually reinforcing systems of oppression. Domestic and sexual violence does not exist in a vacuum. The systems of power and privilege in our society enable and protect the actions of perpetrators.
The new Bill’s broader definition of domestic abuse encompasses physical, sexual, emotional and economic abuse. This can be celebrated as a helpful start point for educating our communities. It hands local authorities more responsibility in supporting survivors but no hard promises for long-term funding. Early drafts of the bill offered little to no support for migrant communities but we are pleased to see that, thanks to the advocacy of survivors groups nationwide, we can expect changes to the Immigration Acts which give survivors some recourse to public funds. The Secretary of State must now ensure the personal data of migrant survivors will not be used for immigration control purposes.
Of course, new protections are celebrated but we are profoundly concerned that the cornerstone of the new Domestic Abuse Bill is that of increasing police powers. Creating more criminal offenses cannot be the primary way in which we deal with domestic violence. The Bill builds upon a framework that requires individuals to approach the police for safety. To ask this, particularly from those communities that are consistently and aggressively over-policed, has not and does not work. The police are notoriously ineffective in dealing with domestic violence. They have none of the specialist knowledge, skills or trust required to positively transform communities or adequately support survivors. Survivors who are marginalised, including people of colour, migrant communities and the LGBTQ+ community, often have good reason to fear and distrust the police. Handing additional weapons to a police force which terrorises these communities routinely, in the name of safety for survivors, is not only unhelpful but dangerous.
Lasting support and safety for survivors cannot be found within the criminal justice system. Writer and organiser Lola Olufemi writes that “the most pressing issues for survivors is not that their abusers go to prison, but that there is a safety net for them to fall back on that enables them to leave abusive situations.” Justice for survivors goes well beyond a carceral solution. We must move the emphasis from the expansion of police power to ring-fenced funding for specialist frontline community services.
There are organisations across the country that, unlike the police, have expert and specialist knowledge of domestic abuse, and are dedicated to supporting survivors within their communities. They have been starved of funds after a decade of Conservative-driven implemented austerity. A Manchester specialist service provider told us this week that, “they’re making us work in darkness. We can’t put things in place that ensure trust and availability to service users [without long-term funding].” The money that is available for these services is being auctioned off to the lowest bidder, often going to a de-specialised service provider with less experience. Properly funding these vital organisations will save lives.
We demand a long-term funding plan for specialist services that meets the needs of all survivors. To those in power, our message is this: your cuts are violent, your cuts are dangerous, and you think that you can get away with them because you have targeted people who you perceive as powerless.
We are those people. We are Sisters Uncut. We will not be silenced.
* We use the term ‘survivor’ when referring to those who have experienced or are experiencing violence and abuse, but we know that this language isn’t perfect. We recognise the resourcefulness and resistance of those living with the impacts of violence whether in the present or the past. We acknowledge that not everyone who experiences or has experienced abuse defines themselves as a ‘survivor’, and that society may determine who is allowed to identify as one. We also recognise that not everyone does survive domestic, sexual, gendered, and/or state violence; we remember those who haven’t in our fight.
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
by Trans State Watch, UK
Trans State Watch UK is a trans-led organisation looking to monitor state violence against trans, nonbinary, intersex and/or gender nonconforming people, collecting, organising, and analysing data based on individual submissions in order to create a clearer picture of the nature of such violence in the United Kingdom. The organisation was formed in response to a lack of formal recognition of, and response to, the specific ways in which state violence operates to oppress trans and gender nonconforming people, through policing and healthcare to name a few.
We felt that it was necessary for such violence to be recorded since transness and gender nonconformity are one of the many ways in which a person can be significantly more vulnerable to the power of the state; in interactions with the police, when trans people are often violated and misgendered; in attempts to access healthcare, which encompasses not only access to gender-affirming hormones and/or surgery but also day-to-day medical needs; in mental health services, where transness is pathologised and belittled, often treated as a symptom or even a manifestation of other mental health problems, preventing a trans person both from having their gender treated with dignity and from receiving the help that they need. The given examples are just a small selection of the many ways in which state violence works to attack both trans and gender-nonconforming individuals, and the very fact of transness and gender nonconformity as a whole.
As far as we are able, we take an approach to understanding transphobic state violence in relation to other vectors of oppression; a person’s race, gender, class, disability, etc. may play as significant a role in shaping their interaction with the state as their transness will, and we aim to account for these as far as we are able to in our work. We do not demand that people disclose any of these factors as we prioritise the safety of those who submit their experiences to us and trust the individual to determine whether or not such a disclosure is worthwhile.
At the same time, one of the aims of the project is to understand not only the fact that transness is related to other vectors of oppression, but the nature of those relationships in the UK context – what forms of state violence are different trans people impacted by, and what are the factors that shape that? It is only when we understand this kind of nuance to transphobic state violence, textured by a variety of power structures and other social factors, that we can begin to address it.
Our policy for data collection is that people can disclose as much or as little information as they prefer, at their own discretion, in order to preserve the individual’s right to anonymity and security. We use the information that we collect to consolidate a firmer understanding of how and why transphobic state violence takes place in the UK, ultimately in order to be better able to combat it.
We can be found at @TSW_UK on Twitter and Trans State Watch UK on Facebook, and contacted at transstatewatch@protonmail.com. If you are interested in volunteering with us, our policy is that we are run exclusively by trans people.
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
A new Stories of Injustice report authored by Becky Clarke and Kathryn Chadwick for JENGbA (Joint Enterprise Not Guilty By Association) finds that at least 109 women have been sentenced to long prison terms on joint enterprise convictions.
“The experiences of the 109 women examined in our report paint a harrowing picture of injustice which is currently sanctioned by our legal system. We would argue that these women are wrongfully convicted, and that charging them for violent crimes they did not commit is neither in the public interest, or delivering justice to victims and communities.”
Becky Clarke
Prosecutors rely on racist, classist and gendered narratives to secure convictions, the report finds. Additionally, in almost one half of cases there had been repeated failures, by the police and other agencies, to protect the women from violence as children and adults, or to respond to their health or care needs.
The report calls for a moratorium on the use of joint enterprise and secondary liability with women, and increased transparency and accountability in the decisions to use secondary liability by the Police and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in cases involving female defendants in multi-offender cases.
The authors call for the evidence on the use of joint enterprise with women defendants to be scrutinised by a Parliamentary Committee with appropriate jurisdiction, alongside a ‘People’s Panel’ of relevant experts and interested parties. Existing barriers to legal appeals for those women currently in prison, where there is a very real possibility of a miscarriage of justice, also need to be removed.
Read the report here, and find out more about JENGbA here.
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
by Sibia Akhtar (Resistance Lab)
Both the policing and prison system offer systematic issues for ethnic minorities in Britain. The issues of policing are often underlaid with the issues within the prison system. Disparities in the treatment of ethnic minorities are prevalent in both systems of oppression as the policing disparities continue in prison. We need to identify the systematic similarities within the policing practices and prison life whereby there is a lack of concern for the treatment of ethnic minorities by the officers and the inmates. This is evident when we consider how decisions made by senior officers in 2000 resulted in the unjust killing of Zahid Mubarek at Feltham Youth Detention centre, London.
Zahid Mubarek was a 19-year-old British Pakistani Muslim, in prison for a first-time offence. He was given a 90-day prison sentence for stealing razors. Mubarek was involved in petty crimes and had run-ins with police officers. His serving of 90 days for stealing a packet of razors for his first offence shows how non-white individuals are given harsher sentences for petty crimes than their white counterparts. When he was just hours from being released from prison, his cellmate, Robert Stewart, hit him with a broken table leg 11 times.[1] Mubarek was taken to hospital but died from his injuries. Mubarek’s murder highlighted the failure of the British criminal justice system from his arrest to his death, thus demonstrating the continuation of injustice from policing to prison. His murder was racially motivated, but the prison system failed to keep Mubarek, a British-Pakistani, safe in prison. He was failed by the police, prison and justice for Mubarek was not immediately served.
In this issue of policing and prison, the question is: why was Mubarek in the same cell as Stewart, who was known to be violent months before he committed a murder? He had spoken about committing his first murder and this was known by some of the prison officers at Feltham. Stewart was openly racist and had a violent past and was suffering from mental health issues. This should have been an indication to the prison guards that Stewart should not be allowed to share a cell with any of the inmates. This was predominantly the reason as to why an inquiry needed to be launched to investigate prison officers’ attitudes to their non-white inmates.
Mubarek was born in 1980, a time where race relations were characterised by white vigilantes’ physical violence towards ethnic minorities in Britain. However, this period also demonstrated a Civil Rights movement in Britain where those of African, Caribbean and South Asian descent mobilised to tackle the racism enacted towards them. Physical violence was evident on the streets but the idea that those in the youth detention centre should have been protected by the racist abuse too just shows how ‘BAME’ communities are perceived as being unBritish. Racism to ethnic minorities had been exacerbated by the politics of those in power and the racial attitudes towards these communities were under threat by racists.[2] The racialized politics in Britain meant that forms of resistance were needed to defeat the racial abuse. The police were unsupportive of these communities who were being attacked and the freedom of speech rules applied. Particularly to the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities, the act of ‘Paki bashing’ became prominent in certain cities with large South Asians communities. The physical racism was much more apparent in this period as hostility to South Asian communities remained prominent. South Asian boys were overpoliced and targeted by the police officers, and at the same time they were suffering as victims from racist violence. ‘Race Riots’ were prominent in cities like Bradford, London and Manchester. South Asian boys particularly defended their communities as they knew that the police would not take the abuse seriously by police officials and the Criminal Justice System.
Before Mubarek’s death, he met with his father a few times and told him about his cellmate Stewart and that he was behaving strangely to which his father responded that Mubarek should stay out of his way and should not let anything get in the way of his release. Mubarek followed his father’s requests but his father did not know that Stewart was a known racist. Mubarek had even notified the prison officers that he wanted to change cells and the prison guards failed to respond promptly to Mubarek’s call. However, the positioning of Mubarek to share a cell with Stewart was not a minor institutional error but a fatal one.
The racialised policing of prison guards was demonstrated when Mubarek was placed in a cell with a known racist who was suffering from mental health issues. This shows how there is a disregard for these issues which have not been tackled properly or considered. It is a fatal situation and the points made in the inquiry must be considered to prevent further disproportionate deaths in the prison service.[3] The inquiry followed after constant pressure from the victim’s family to have his death investigated, and this is also another consideration as to why families have to constantly battle to have these inquiries take place.
By 2008, the family of Mubarek were able to launch an inquiry into the murder of their son.[4] This was seen as a victory for the family and those involved in the case, but it took so long and required continuous pressure from the family, MPs such as David Blunkett and community activists to push for the inquiry to take place. The inquiry found that his death was preventable.[5] Also, the inquiry demonstrated that the prison officers showed little concern about Stewart, known for racism and harassment, but also as someone suffering from mental health issues, sharing a cell with anyone let alone a Pakistani boy.
As news articles from the time showed, police officers refused to follow up on the inquest into Mubarek’s death and the similarities with the death of Stephen Lawrence, particularly there were parallels between the policing and covering up of unjust deaths of ‘BAME’ individuals and the institutionalised racism within the prison.[6] A report was needed to show that the police service was to blame for the death and appropriate consideration of Mubarek’s self. In the report, the police officers knew of Stewart’s racist history, his ongoing letters depicting racial violence, but also that Mubarek asked numerous times that he wanted to be moved away from his cellmate.[7]
The Mubarek inquiry (2014) also found that prison officers were unlikely to check on the wellbeing of the prisoners, particularly those who are vulnerable. But it also highlighted that many officers were not equipped to see these issues taking place in the cell. Here arises the problem of cell sharing, and the dangers associated with this. The practice of cell sharing highlighted that it needs to be removed to prevent these deaths from taking place in the future, and the training of prison officers needs to be improved to protect the ‘BAME’ individuals. Especially because Mubarek did reach out to the prison officers about Stewart multiple times, yet this was never investigated until after his death.
The importance of recovering these cases demonstrates how far we still need to go in terms of how the police and prison officers treat ‘BAME’ people, in this case a South Asian individual. The way policing operates in the prison service does not aim to protect but it is a hostile place for people like Mubarek, and there needs to be structural anti-racist improvement in how the system operates. To bring about systemic change, we must continue to seek justice and hold the perpetrators accountable whilst also supporting the affected communities.
[2] Solomos, J. (2003) Race and Racism in Britain, Basingstoke: Palgrave.
[3] HM Inspectorate of Prisons (2014). Report of a review of the implementation of the Zahid Mubarek Inquiry recommendations A thematic review. London: Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons.
[4] Family wins race murder inquiry Alan Travis Home affairs editor The Guardian (1959-2003); Sep 5, 2001; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian and The Observer
[5] HM Inspectorate of Prisons (2014). Report of a review of the implementation of the Zahid Mubarek Inquiry recommendations A thematic review. London: Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons, p.6.
[6] Rollock, N. (2009) The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Ten Years On, London: Runnymede Trust.
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
‘There were a couple of PCSOs stationed outside the front doors of the [Owens Park] Tower from the afternoon well into the evening. Then we sat and watched as Fallowfield descended into chaos, and students were hounded back into their halls by an overzealous police force, riot vans and all. My heart completely goes out to the many students who would have found this extremely upsetting, I know if I were in your situation I would have found the whole ordeal very difficult, and a strain on my mental health. To have this happen in a University, residential setting makes it even worse. This campus should be a place for young people to safely experience everything University has to offer without fearing policemen or the security hired by the University of Manchester.’
‘I had my ID card in my hand and they tried to snatch it from me. The next thing I know I was being pinned up against the wall. There was no conversation. They just pinned me up against the wall and said I looked like a drug dealer. Why? Because I am black and wearing a hoodie?… It’s disgusting, I haven’t been able to sleep. I am traumatized by the situation. My parents came from Somalia as refugees and have given up everything for me to be at this institution. I am the first person in my family to go to university, so for me it’s an achievement – but when they hear about things like this happening, my parents are begging me to go back home… I want to be able to live in peace and enter my flat in peace and not be stopped and abused by the people we are paying to protect us.’
Following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police and the resurgence of #BlackLivesMatter protests this summer, senior leaders at Manchester’s city-based campuses issued public declarations of sympathy and support. In a statement released on June 2nd, Professor Malcolm Press, Vice Chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), insisted that campus leaders stood ‘shoulder to shoulder with people affected by racism and discrimination’ and encouraged students not to ‘be silent’. ‘You, your experiences and ideas matter.’ Professor Nalin Thakkar, Vice President for Social Responsibility at the University of Manchester, similarly acknowledged the ‘problem of racial inequality and discrimination’ and expressed the University’s commitment to ‘prevent systemic racism and act where we see evidence of bias.’ In a conversation with reporters for the student newspaper, The Mancunion, April McMahon, Vice President of Teaching, Learning and Students echoed this sentiment pointing to the University’s efforts to decolonise the curriculum as well as ongoing collaborations with community partners to tackle racism on and off campus. ‘The more we can hear people’s stories and experiences and try and understand them, that’s just vital for us.’
Against this backdrop, the public statements of first year French and Linguistics student Zac Adan and the unnamed student occupier of the Owens Park Tower strike a discordant note. Despite these initial expressions of commitment to anti-racism, University leaders would use the weeks and months that followed to prepare for a full return to campus against the backdrop of a global public health crisis that continues to disproportionately impact Black people and other People of Colour. Driven by economic interests, and particularly the desire to secure student tuition and rent fees, tens of thousands of students were encouraged to travel from around the world to take up residence in cramped, congregate living facilities located in close proximity to some of Manchester’s most ethnically diverse and working-class communities. Moreover, policing – the issue at the heart of the summer’s #BlackLivesMatter campaigns – would paradoxically come to serve as the key instrument in the two universities efforts to manage the inherent risks associated with the return to campus.
As had been forewarned by Independent Sage, Sage and the Universities and College Union, COVID-19 case numbers predictably surged in residence halls across the city during September. In response, campus leaders at both MMU and the University of Manchester deployed additional security forces and drew upon new legislative powers enshrined in the Coronavirus Act 2020 to tighten control over students’ lives and mobility. On September 25th, MMU in tandem with city authorities locked down the Birley and Cambridge residence halls insisting that all students should refrain from leaving their accommodations ‘including for study, part-time work or socialising, unless there is a medical emergency.’ Nearly two thousand students found themselves confined without prior notice to residence halls with access strictly controlled by a growing number of police and private security guards. When the lockdown began, Megan Tingey, a 19-year-old criminology student, had just completed her 14-day self-isolation period after receiving a positive test for COVID-19. ‘It was quite scary and confusing,’ she explained. ‘A police van turned up and there were police outside the gate, quite a lot of them just walking around looking at everyone… No one’s really told us much and then the police turn up as well with security outside – it’s a really, really difficult situation.’
Only a few miles down Oxford Road at the University of Manchester, students were arriving on campus for freshers’ week. Fearing similar outbreaks in the Fallowfield residence halls, campus leaders issued a stark public statement on September 24th:
‘We have been very clear to students that they must respect social distancing rules and all other restrictions to keep themselves and others safe. If students do not comply, they will face disciplinary action from the University, which could lead to fines or expulsion, and we will not hesitate to involve the police if necessary. Some students have already been issued with fixed penalty notices by the police. Additional security officers have been deployed in Fallowfield and further reminders sent. Details of offending students are being recorded and a number of those will now go through our disciplinary process. Active consideration is also being given to introducing a curfew across all halls. We really want to avoid this but if residents fail to adhere to social distancing rules we will be faced with no alternative.’
Within days of this announcement, COVID-19 rates were spiraling out of control in the Fallowfield halls with hundreds of students forced to self-isolate and classes quickly moved online. Over the coming weeks, the University would make good on its threat to employ disciplinary procedures and police power to control an anxious and increasingly organized student population now engaged in protests and levying a rent strike. On November 5th, students awoke to find fences erected around the residence halls with only a single exit point manned by university security guards. Students wishing to enter or exit their homes were now subject to ID checks and the swipe cards that enabled them access to other buildings were disabled. University leaders insisted that the measures had been enacted ‘to help keep our students, our staff and our community safe.’ Many students disagreed. ‘It makes us feel like they don’t trust us, it feels like they’re locking us in our rooms,’ explained George Rogers, a first-year planning and real estate student. Isabella Mearns, a first-year architecture student agreed, ‘We just feel like prisoners at the moment.’ Later that day, students assembled for a mass demonstration that culminated with the fences being torn down.
It was against this backdrop that on November 12th the unnamed student occupier (quoted at the beginning of this post) joined others from the growing UoM Rent Strike, 9k 4 What? and Students before Profit campaigns in entering the Owens Park Tower. In a public statement, the student occupier explained,
‘We have been forced to undertake this drastic action because of the University’s refusal to meet the very reasonable demands of the Rent Strike. We are also concerned about the University’s constant prioritizing of profit before students and staff. We are disappointed that it had to get to this point, but we are prepared to continue this action until the University meets our demands.’
What is apparent is that University leaders – despite their expressions of sympathy and support – were not really listening to the ‘stories and experiences’ of students in the face of overwhelming police power. It was the University’s own policies that created the context for these traumatizing experiences of overpolicing, surveillance and racial profiling.
Had the university moved beyond vacuous statements, to take seriously the lessons of this summer’s anti-racist protests, then these events would have been entirely foreseeable. In Greater Manchester, and nationally, policing disproportionately harms Black communities. These historical and enduring patterns are evident in data on stop and search, in use of force including Taser, in racial profiling through gangs databases, and at all levels of policing. These issues are apparent in the context of private security too, and specifically on university campuses where Black students are too often seen as trespassers, or ‘bodies out of place’. What’s particularly jarring is that in addition to the voices of students, there is also a strong evidence base – including from academics working at these very institutions – that highlights these issues.
With all of this in mind, we have to ask why exactly the University of Manchester need to carry out an investigation into the incident of racial profiling? The problems are plain to see, and whilst the investigation will likely see the blame fall solely on individual security staff in order to protect the university, much of the fault lies with the institution! Not only because it has put lives at risk by treating students as cash cows, but because, despite its rhetoric and high-profile hires, and despite the agitation of its students, it has failed to do the necessary work of addressing institutional racism. Through the whiteness of its curricula and its teaching staff, to the toothlessness of its approaches to ‘equality and diversity’, its inaction on the ‘awarding gap’, and its numerous close links with the police, the university has created the campus conditions that marginalise Black students. Many of these issues were highlighted in a set of demands made by Decolonise UoM back in June. Evidently foreseeing just how vacuous university statements would transpire to be, they said:
‘If the University of Manchester is truly committed to anti-racism and decolonisation, as it claims, we call on the institution to demonstrate a commitment to Black Lives Matter not just through words, but through action.’
We are now seeing the impact of the university’s inaction. However, as student protesters are showing, it will be through organising and resistance that change will come.
This year, the Northern Police Monitoring Project and Kids of Colour launched a campaign to get police out of schools. With support from the National Education Union’s North West Black Members Organizing Forum, the No Police in Schools campaign highlights how penal enforcement is creeping into education, and how this is harmful to students, particularly those from minoritised communities. The recent events on university campuses in Manchester, and elsewhere, coupled with previous campaigns for Cops off Campus, serve as a stark reminder that these are urgent issues for university students too!
We, the Northern Police Monitoring Project (NPMP), express our solidarity and deep concern for the safety of student occupiers associated with the UoM Rent Strike movement as well as the wider student population and surrounding communities of the University of Manchester.
These developments take place against the backdrop of the University of Manchester’s recent attempt to erect physical barriers around the Fallowfield residence halls, a move that prompted student protest and has since been replaced by heightened security patrols.
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
by Smina Akhtar (School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Glasgow)
The killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis last month sparked global demonstrations not only about police brutality in the US but police brutality and structural racism at home. Some people may be surprised to know that there were Black Lives Matter events in different parts of Scotland too. There remains a widespread belief amongst many Scots that racism doesn’t happen here, we call it the myth of Scottish Exceptionalism, but the killing of George Floyd allowed Sheku Bayoh’s family to remind us that deaths in police custody happen in Scotland too.
Was the fact that Sheku was Black and a Muslim significant? If so, then racism did have a part to play.
Examples of the police using brutal force to contain public protest are not hard to find; examples include the 1984-5 miners strikes, poll tax demonstrations, the killing of anti-racist activist Blair Peach in 1979. The system which investigates severe misconduct within the police exists on a state canvas which is also institutionally racist. This ensures that any challenge to their authority by families and activists involved in deaths in police custody campaigns are contained. The racism of the police has been documented countless times and ranges from the disproportionate stop and search statistics of Black and other racialised groups, to publicly disclosed evidence that the police spied on the family of Stephen Lawrence knowing that they had failed to investigate his death sufficiently. In Scotland, it took the police and judicial system 18 years of constant pressure from the family lawyer, Aamer Anwar as well as a change in the law to prosecute the killers of Surjit Singh Chokkar.
Sheku’s sister Kadi told me that after Sheku’s death, police officers met family members separately and told them different versions of how Sheku died which naturally made them suspicious. At one point the family were told Sheku had been found by a member of the public. They were told he had a machete, which was downgraded to a knife and then a blade – all in one conversation, though no such item was on him when arrested.
The press ran several stories which can be described as racist, often originating from police sources; police suspected Sheku was a terrorist because they realised Sheku had been brought up Muslim. The police asked Sheku’s partner if they ate pork and bacon at home, no doubt to establish whether he was a practising Muslim, they even asked her if she got on with the rest of the family, because they are Black and she is white. Some newspapers reported that he’d been high on drugs and had fought with his best friend. All in an attempt to present Sheku as violent and justify the amount of force used on him when he was being arrested.
Aamer Anwar wrote in Scottish Left Review that, ‘CS spray, Pava (pepper) spray and batons were used by uniformed police officers on Sheku as he was restrained and brought to the ground by several officers within 42 seconds of their arrival. Some officers stated they believed they were under ‘terrorist attack’. CCTV footage leaked to the BBC revealed that Sheku was also handcuffed and restraints applied to his knees and ankles. Shortly thereafter, he lost consciousness and died. His body was covered with lacerations, bruising and a broken rib’, over 50 injuries in total.
The police post mortem found no conclusive cause of death, common in deaths in police custody because when so many non-lethal weapons are used it is not possible to identify which caused the fatal blow. The report however cited excited delirium, a very much contested condition which is caused by excessive struggle whilst being restrained. The family’s pathologist concluded Sheku died of ‘positional asphyxiation’ which meant he couldn’t breathe, caused by the use of extreme force. Such use of force is more common in Black deaths in police custody, justified by a racist stereotype of the Black man possessing super human strength, which has existed since slavery. This is how Sheku was portrayed by the Scottish Police Federation lawyer Peter Watson when he told the media that ‘a petite female police officer was subjected to a violent and unprovoked attack by a very large man who punched, kicked and stamped on her.’
Sheku was of average height, 5-foot 10 weighing 12 stone 10 pounds. The same ‘petite’ police officer alleged in her submission to the Court of Session for early retirement in 2019, that when she was kicked by Sheku she landed across the road resulting in significant injuries which have prevented her from returning to work since. Aamer Anwar states that ‘no one could kick a person that distance, especially since CCTV footage shows that Sheku was handcuffed and face down on the ground within seconds of police officers arriving on the scene’. It was also revealed that one of the police officers on the scene when Sheku died was reported by his own family to be a violent racist.
There were several instances where we can see how the system closed in to protect the police officers from recrimination. The police officers who arrested and restrained Sheku, in a restrain that led to his death, were allowed to go back to the station and sit in a room together which gave them an opportunity to confer. This would never have happened if they had been treated as suspects. PIRC, the body that investigated Sheku’s death, didn’t have the power to force police officers to give statements; they eventually gave statements 32 days after Sheku died. That would not have happened if a civilian had been suspected of killing Sheku, or if a civilian had been suspected of being responsible for the death of a police officer.
Just as the PIRC investigation was about to start, the then head of Police Scotland, Stephen Hause met the police officers involved, he didn’t bother meeting Sheku’s family. Kenny McAskill, the former Justice Secretary but still an MSP at the time wrote in a police magazine that no criminality would be found in the case, effectively claiming that the police officers were not guilty, this was months before the investigation had concluded. He added that this case was an example of ‘open season of hunting Police Scotland’ thus dismissing the family’s legitimate right to an investigation.
Sheku’s family have had no public funds to help them find out what really happened to him, they have had to fundraise and rely on the goodwill of their legal team and professionals they have sought services from, whilst the police and judiciary have access to public funds to safeguard their reputation and authority.
Finally, Dame Eilish Angiolini’s interim report of the Public Inquiry into deaths in custody has recommended that there should be no delays in investigations, that police should not be allowed to confer and investigating bodies such as PIRC be more independent of the police. These conditions were not met in PIRC’s investigation which is why Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf have agreed to have an independent Public Inquiry. Scotland could have its own equivalent of the MacPherson Inquiry report following the killing of Black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993, which concluded that the police were institutionally racist. At that time, Scottish police said that McPherson didn’t happen in Scotland and the police weren’t racist. The Sheku Bayoh Public Inquiry may conclude otherwise.
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
by Katy Sian (Northern Police Monitoring Project)
Despite white America’s attempts to forget, lynchings of black bodies are not simply part of a grisly and shameful chapter in the history of the US. Lynchings are very much the present, with black body, after black body, after black body, murdered by white supremacists masquerading as police. This is borne out of a system built on racism; a society whose laws, culture, politics, and education, serve white supremacy. The United States, it seems, is only united in its disregard, disrespect, and dismissal of black lives. Police racism and violence knows no bounds in this context, with officers inflicting a regime of daily terror upon African Americans. They do not serve to protect, but serve to kill. They do not serve to keep communities safe, but serve to keep them defenceless. They do not serve for the common good, but serve for the exceptionally bad.
The US has always criminalized black bodies, so much so, that being black is in itself a crime. This is a society that prefers to incarcerate masses and masses of black and brown bodies, rather than afford them the right to an education. Communities of colour are kept in poverty, rather than being provided with the access to healthcare, welfare, and resources that they so desperately need. It is a society that prefers to kill innocent black bodies, rather than see them live, grow, and prosper. The US was built by the hands of African Americans – their blood, their sweat, and their tears – and how are they repaid? It seems that the shackles, chains, servitude and oppression, wasn’t enough, now bullets fired into their backs, chokeholds, and officers kneeling on their necks to the sound of I can’t breathe.
The myth of ‘threatening’ racial ‘others,’ particularly black bodies, has served to legitimize police brutality throughout history right up to the present day. This of course is not unique to the US; it is standard practice across all Western nations. In the UK, as Stuart Hall documents, there was the construction of the mugging crisis in the 1970s, which linked so called mugging to black youth, so much so that, “mugging and black crime are now virtually synonymous”. By falsely equating mugging to black youth, official responses in the form of oppressive street policing in inner city areas i.e., ‘trouble spots,’ were legitimized.
The murder of George Floyd, and the many other black men and women before him, and after him, really has to make us question the role of the police in society. Unfortunately, as so often is the case when these horrific events happen, we see the all too familiar ‘bad apples’ argument being replayed. In this narrative it is the individual officers who are to blame. We must question how many times this claim can be made before we reach a point and finally admit that it is the whole system that is rotten. Recent events have certainly contributed to the opposing of the ‘bad apples’ framework, as more and more recognize that the problems with the police are indeed systemic.
The police for black and brown working class communities have always represented what Sivanandan refers to as, ‘an army of occupation’.[ii] The notion of the ‘bobby on the beat’ who is trusted and supported by the community is therefore a fantasy, and couldn’t be more further away from the realities experienced by communities of colour who remain targeted and pursued in all walks of life, from the war on drugs to the war on terror. Over the decades, the police have become increasingly militarized with tactics being deployed around coercion rather than consent. Equipped with armed vehicles, assault rifles, grenades, and snipers the police continue to spread terror with a state sanctioned capacity to use violence on their targets. They have more and more power, and less and less accountability, often operating with total impunity.
In his 2018 book, The End of Policing, Alex Vitale makes a compelling case for the abolition of the police. He demonstrates that the key purpose of the police is to supress poor, working class, and non-white communities. He argues that more police than ever before are engaged in more enforcement of more laws, resulting in astronomical levels of incarceration and abuse, particularly aimed at black and brown communities. For communities of colour then, the police have an increasingly pervasive, and aggressive, presence. In light of George Floyd we can no longer ignore or deny the toxicity inherent within policing. Reform is not enough, and the mobilizations and campaigns around Black Lives Matter and wider calls for police and prison abolition need to be taken seriously, if we want a better society and future for all.
For too long now we have seen a liberal complacency, and an attempt to weaken anti-racism, prompted by a false belief in the post-racial ideology, i.e. the idea that the West is somehow free from racism. Over several decades, this liberal denial of racism has paved the way for a dangerous unchecking of white supremacy, which has facilitated the landscape that we find ourselves within today. The Black Lives Matter movement is therefore significant to call out and call to account the racism that has been left to fester for far too long. It is an exciting and transformative movement that is rebuilding and strengthening anti-racist and abolitionist movements, allowing voices of the dispossessed to be heard across the globe. From the protests in the US, to the removal of statues across Europe, and solidarity from the Palestinians, these are critical uprisings that are forcing the West to own up to its brutal colonial history, and recognize the way in which those imperial legacies continue to inflict pain and suffering among black and brown bodies throughout the world.
In her book, Freedom is a Constant Struggle, Angela Davis alerts us to the necessity of forging transnational and intersectional solidarities arguing that, “we will have to be willing to stand up with our combined spirits, our collective intellects and our many bodies”. This seems symbolic of the Black Lives Matter movement today. It represents a force for real change through its ability to connect so many of us around the world fighting for social justice, allowing our collective demands on the state to be heard. This has to be the start of a new global and hegemonic anti-racist politics, and now more than ever is the time for all of us to be courageous, after all, as W.E.B Du Bois reminds us, the cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.
This article was initially published in the NPMP Magazine Issue 2. You can read all the articles and the full magazine here. To order your physical copy please email npolicemonitor@gmail.com.
