Another black man dies while being arrested by officers based at Handsworth’s Thornhill Road police station.

Officers detain Michael Powell,38, outside a house in Wilton Street, Lozells, Birmingham, at 0035 BST on Sunday, September 7, 2003.

A struggle develops in which a passerby joins the police in overpowering Mr Powell.

A neighbour of Mr Powell's mother, Abid Ali, says he sees officers use batons and CS gas to restrain Mr Powell.

He adds that he is concerned by what he sees and later makes notes and a sketch of the events.

He tells BBC's Midlands Today: "They CS gassed him and they were hitting him with their sticks on his legs to get him to the floor."

They take him to Thornhill Road police station, where he collapses. He is taken by ambulance to the City Hospital where he is pronounced dead just before 0200 BST.

Just eighty-five minutes pass between Michael Powell comes into contact with the police and doctors pronounce him dead.

Thornhill Road officers have a history of police-on-black violence. Shohik Meah, 43, died at the station in 1981.

The black community expects no officers will be punished for the death of Michael Powell even if a corner court were to find his death to be an “unlawful killing”.

It is surely time the responsibility for investigation of alleged police-on-black crime is transferred from the police to an independent organization.

Source: BBC News online