On his visit to London in May 1993, Nelson Mandela said black lives are as “cheap” in Britain as they were under South African apartheid (1). He was speaking after meeting the family of Stephen Lawrence, the black student killed by racists in April 1993.

Mandela’s meeting and comment might still contain two valuable lessons for Britons campaigning for justice on behalf of people who have died in police custody. First, when it comes such deaths, police seem “to act with impunity” (Amnesty 2000:3). Second, unless campaigners win international support, police immunity from prosecution will continue.

On October 3 2003, a coroner’s court jury took just two hours to decide officers from Stoke Newington police station had “unlawfully killed” Roger Sylvester, a 30-year -old council worker, in January 1999 (2).

Roger was neither the first nor last black man to be “unlawfully killed” by police. On December 16 1994, police killed Oluwashiji "Shiji" Lapite by having “twice kicked him in the head with great force, bit him and restrained him using the neck-hold” (Amnesty 2000:1).

At Ilford police station on March 16 1996, while handcuffed and pinned to the ground on his stomach for 15 minutes, cops repeatedly strayed CS gas in the face of 29-year-old Ibrahima Sey (Inquest 1997). Ibrahima lost consciousness. He was dead.

The killings have not stopped with Ibrahima Sey. Since David Oluwale death in 1969, over 1000 black people have died in police custody (3).

In spite of the rising death toll, there have been no convictions of officers involved in the death of members of the public. In fact, whereas prosecutors are lukewarm about charging cops, judges are unwilling to convict them.

A quick look at two cases should do as examples of judges’ unwillingness to convict cops: James Ashley and Christopher Alder. In these rare cases, prosecutors charged the officers involved in the suspects’ death with manslaughter and murder.

In both cases the trial judge did not leave it up to the jury to decide the guilt or otherwise of the officers. In the Alder case, Mr Justice Evans directed the jury to acquit the cops in June 2001 (4). Mrs Justice Rafferty did likewise in the Ashley case in May 2001 (5).

In each case prosecutors’ seriousness in securing the officers’ conviction was doubtful. For example, they did not tell the court that throughout the last seven minutes of his life, as he gasped for breath, police officers mocked Mr Alder, a black man, with “monkey chants” (6).

At the start of the trial of three officers involved in the shooting of James Ashley, the prosecution offered no evidence against them. In effect, they abandoned the trial (9).

With prosecutors and judges unwilling to hold police officers to account for their actions (2), if police immunity from prosecution is to end, campaigners for justice on behalf of death in custody victims will have to change the scope and emphasis of their campaign.

The campaign scope should now include a call for the United Nation to investigate deaths in custody in Britain.

The emphasis should be on widening the campaign geographic area from district to citywide, from national to international.

Further emphasis should be put on getting more people involved in campaigns around the issues of death in custody. Take a petition to get the UN to investigate such deaths. If the campaign gets just ten signatures for each death in custody, it will collect ten thousand signatures. But most importantly, ten thousand people will learn about the issues.

A further useful spin-off from a campaign to petition the UN is that it will give black communities a sense of collective purpose independent of self-serving “black leaders” such as Lee Jasper.

Without a changing its scope and emphasis, justice campaigns on behalf of those who die in custody will continue to follow a familiar path of falling for the tricks of “black leaders”, lawyers, police, prosecutors and judges. That cheapens black lives.

winston smith ©blaqfair 1984

References:

Newspapers

(1) Pilkington, Edward (07/05/93) “Mandela meets family of stabbing victim” The Guardian

(2) Foster, Angela (6/10/03) “Unlawful Killing!” New Nation

(3) Hattenstone, Simon (30/03/01) “Why?” The Guardian

(4) Jenkins, Russell (22/05/02) “Jury ordered to clear police” The Times

(5) The Guardian (26/05/01) “Death raid police chief quits”

(6) Dodd, Vikram (23/06/02) “Monkey chants as black man died ‘not racist’” The Guardian

Reports

Amnesty International (2000) “Death in custody: lack of police accountability”

Inquest (1997) “Report on the death in custody of Ibrahima Sey”