The British media did not report nationally the death of Michael Powell in Handsworth, Birmingham, on September 09, 2003. Mr Powell, a 38-year-old father of three, died in suspicious circumstances. His death adds to the hundreds of black people who have died, many unlawfully killed, in police custody.

But for the success of police propaganda in creating in the public mind the stereotype of black people as a criminal population would Michael Powell’s death be just another uncontroversial statistic? This question can best be answered by looking at how police propaganda constructs the stereotype of black people as a criminal population; and what purpose it serve them to label some homicides as black-on-black crimes.

Propaganda works best when it aims to reinforce existing beliefs and trends (Welch 1993:5). The novelist Aldous Huxley says: “The propagandist is a man who canalies an already existing stream. In a land where there is no water, he digs in vain”. In Britain racism is the “stream” that flows through much of British culture.

British culture is rooted in an empire that collapsed forty years ago. The British Empire was predicated on racism: “The belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby the right to dominance” (Andre Lorde). Kipling described the black and brown peoples colonized by Britain as amoral, brutish “half devil”. Today, such racist ideas underpin police propaganda.

Police propaganda reflects the two elements of racism identified by George Fredrickson in Racism: A Short History. Fredrickson argues that racism has two components: difference and power. Racism divides humanity into “them” and “us”:blacks and whites. Racial difference is then used to justify or rationalise treating blacks in ways that whites would consider “as cruel or unjust if applied to members of their own” racial group (Fredrickson 2002:09).

In their construction of black people as a criminal population, police propaganda brings together ideas about racial difference with public perception of people who commit crime as different, amoral, brutish devils. This can be seen at work in recent media reports of the murder of Bertram Byfield, 41, and his daughter, 7-year-old Toni-Ann Byfield.

An as yet unknown assailant shot Toni-Ann once in the back and Mr Byfield several times at his flat in Kensal Green, northwest London on September 14, 2003. The motive for the double homicide is unknown.

What is known is that Mr Byfield ‘was jailed for nine years for supplying crack cocaine’ (The Independent, 17/09/03). Apparently, he was shot six times last year in what is reported as a "domestic" incident. Finally, Mr Byfield grew up in Jamaica, although he is British born.

The police are only the source of such information. They informed the press and television about Mr Byfield past. Hence The Guardian reports: “Police believe Toni-Ann was murder because she saw her father killer”(19/09/03).

Given that the police do not know the killer’s motive, what purpose does such information about the deceased serve? The chief purpose is to define Mr Byfield as someone different, a crack-cocaine dealer. As such his homicide is less a disaster and more a consequence of his criminality, pre-mature death comes with the turf. The information, in other words, serves primarily to dehumanise Mr Byfield. It also serves to scotch any sympathy the public might feel for him as a loving parent who was caring for his child, doing a normal activity with her such as taking her shopping for a school uniform.

The second purpose of such information is to link Mr Byfield to black people in general and Jamaicans in particular. That is to identify him as someone different, “a Briton raised in Jamaica” (The Telegraph 19/09/03). This reinforces just how different Mr Byfield was from white people. Furthermore, by emphasising such differences a whole box of deep-rooted racist stereotypes about blacks, especially Jamaicans, are unpacked without making explicit references to them.

The information’s final purpose is to define by association all black people as criminals like Mr Byfield, a crack-cocaine dealer. Thus defined the hurdle is cleared to stereotype certain unlawful acts as different, black-only crimes.

So-called gun-crime is one of several black-only crimes according to police propaganda. But what is a gun-crime exactly? How is it different from other crimes where offenders use a gun? The chief difference seems to be that gun-crime involves blacks shooting each other, so-called black-on-black crime. Two homicides involving firearms illustrate the sinister double standard behind the police label black-on-black gun crime.

On April 26, 1999, Jill Dando, a TV presenter, was killed with a single bullet to the head in front of her home in Fulham, west London. George Barry, 42, was convicted of her murder on July 2, 2002 (The Guardian, 3/07/02). Dando was white, so is Barry. Neither the police nor press referred to her murder as white-on-white.

Nor did they refer to Tony Martin killing of 16-year-old Fred Barras as a gun crime. In August 1999, 54-year-old Martin shot Barras with “an illegally-held pump-action shotgun” as the teenager was fleeing a crime scene in Emneth Hungate, Norfolk (BBC News 13/06/03). Unlike the Byfield homicides, race did not feature in police and press reporting of the Barras homicide. That difference points to the real purpose behind police labelling gun crime as one committed by blacks alone.

Gun crime and black-on-black crime real purpose are as labels they identify a particular race on which the police can heap blame for both violent crime escalation and their inability to solve them. In other words, the labels fuse deep-rooted notion of race with ideas about criminal pathology to create a bogey that the police can use to deflect the public gaze away from the growing number of unsolved murders, especially in London.

The fact is this: “Britain murder rate has risen to its highest level since records began 100 years ago” (The Sunday Times 13/09/02). Police recorded 886 homicides in England and Wales in 2001/02, an increase of 36 on the previous year; 768 were detected, which represents a decrease in the detection rate consistent with the preceding four years (Jon Simmons 2003). In the same period, there were 22 gun related deaths, which represents less than 3 per cent of all homicides (BBC News 16/09/03). The public hardly hears about the 97 per cent of murders that are not so-called black-on-black gun crime. Nor do the national media report the increasing number of black people who are unlawfully killed in police custody.

Michael Powell died in a police van after officers mowed him down with a car and then while they restrained him, they sprayed teargas in his face and beat him with batons. Such inhuman treatment did not merit national headlines because police propaganda dehumanises black people, stereotypes them as different, a criminal population against whom they can wage war in the name of fighting crime.

As in all wars propaganda serves to demonise the enemy in order to justify treating him in ways that would be considered cruel and inhuman if done to one of “us”. Racial difference is used to construct “them” and “us”, blacks and whites; to desensitise white people to the lot of black people, which is of course the aim of police propaganda in stereotyping black people as a criminal population. But for such propaganda Michael Powell’s death would be less an uncontroversial statistic and more a crime against humanity, like all unlawful killings in police custody.

Bibliography

Fredrickson G (2002) Racism: A Short History Princeton University Press
Welch D (1993) The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda Routledge
Simmons Jon et al (2002) Crime in England and Wales 2001/2002