London’s minority communities complain of increased scrutiny
By Mary Jordan
LONDON: Albert Siriboe is a black man in his 20s who lives south of the Thames River, which means, he said, he is liable to be stopped by police at any time for no reason.
“The attitude of police is if one black person is a bomber then we are all bombers,” said Siriboe, 26, a sales clerk who said police often accost him as he walks to work or drives his car.
Siriboe’s complaint is a common story in his south London neighbourhood of Stockwell, where many residents are from Africa and the Caribbean. Many residents said they were saddened but not surprised when police shot and killed Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, a Brazilian electrician, in the Stockwell subway station as they hunted a bombing suspect.
Menezes’ death and complaints about police bias in minority communities are focusing attention on Scotland Yard, which has been struggling to live down the reputation of being branded ‘institutionally racist’ in a watershed 1999 independent report.
That report spurred the Metropolitan Police Service, Scotland Yard’s official name, to start a major recruiting drive to shape a more diverse force. The percentage of black or minority officers on the 31,500-member force has risen from 3.4 per cent in 1999 to 7.2 per cent today, according to official statistics.
Stockwell and nearby Brixton are among London’s most racially mixed neighbourhoods, where Asians and blacks together make up about a quarter of the city’s population of seven million, according to government statistics. Racial tensions have flared repeatedly south of the river, especially during riots in Brixton in the 1980s and 1990s, and many people are deeply suspicious of the police.
Siriboe said the situation worsened last month, after a July 7 attack on three subway trains and a London bus in which 65 people died, including four suicide bombers, and a July 21 unsuccessful bombing. The four bombers and five people charged in the failed attempt were young men who were either dark-skinned immigrants or sons of immigrants from Africa and Asia.
“Relations have never been good, and what is going on now doesn’t help,” said Siriboe, who moved to Britain from Ghana about 15 years ago.
“They are stopping me for who I am,” Siriboe said. “It’s frustrating. I am trying to put myself in their situation, but I can see why so many minorities are angry.”
At the Shapes 2 barbershop in Stockwell, which specializes in Afro hair styling, people listening to Siriboe’s complaints about the police nodded knowingly. Human rights and citizens groups who monitor police report a far more aggressive stop-and-search policy by police since the bombings and they said it has largely targeted people of colour.
Police apologized for shooting Menezes to death on July 22, saying it was a mistake in the tense days right after the subway and bus attacks. Since then, neighbours have been laying flowers and notes at a makeshift altar in his honour at the subway entrance, with many messages that lash out at the police, including one that reads, ‘Innocent life destroyed by a trigger-happy racist cop’.
British police have long had broad powers to ‘stop and search’ people on the street. Those powers were extended under anti-terrorism laws enacted after Sept. 11, 2001. Since last month’s bombings, it has become even more routine for London police to stop, question and sometimes search anyone they consider suspicious. Officers must provide a form and their badge number that can be used if those stopped want to file a complaint. Scotland Yard says it does not engage in racial profiling. Police Commissioner Ian Blair said at a news conference this month that the department’s stop and search policy is strictly ‘intelligence based’.
“If we said that the only people we were going to search would be young males of African-Caribbean, Asian or North African appearance, it would be handing the objectives to the terrorists and they would immediately change their tactics,” Blair said. “On the other hand, officers are aware of the suspects so far, and will act accordingly.”
Ian Johnston, chief constable of the British Transport Police, a separate agency, was more candid in a recent newspaper interview when he said that his officers would not be ‘wasting time searching old white ladies’ for bombs.
Transport police statistics show that seven times as many people were searched in July than in June, and that nearly double the percentage of Asians were being stopped after the bombings. The aggressive police work in the past month has been a comfort to many Londoners. Police supporters measure success with results: five men accused of carrying bombs on July 21 are now behind bars, along with many others accused of helping them or hindering the police investigation.
“Most people are delighted,” said Kate Hoey, a member of Parliament who represents the area that includes Stockwell. She said older residents are especially happy about the visible police presence and believe it directly helps them by deterring burglaries and other crimes.
In recent years, she said, police have made a concerted effort to reach out to her constituents. “White kids are also fed up with” stops and searches, she said, and as officers get to know neighbourhoods better, the numbers could decrease. Currently, 15 per cent of recruitment classes at Scotland Yard are blacks and other minorities, according to police figures. A police spokesman said officials want the police force to match London’s ethnic mix.
But racism in the police force is still a major problem, according to Helen Shaw, co-director of Inquest, a nonprofit group. “If you are a young black man in London you are likely to have been stopped,” she said. “People are outraged and tired of it.”
Among random interviews of black and minority people on a recent day in Stockwell, almost everyone described being stopped by police, many more than once, some dozens of times this year. —Dawn/The Washington Post News Service
