Name: Police probed after black woman punched during arrest - BBC Newsnight
Uploaded: 2020-11-25T18:32:23.000Z
Duration: 12 min 1 s
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Adverbs of degree

I just finished my essay and I came out to celebrate.

I wanted Thio go out and grab something to eat.

I bumped into an old friend of mine, so I got into the back of his car and we just started chatting.

He wanted Thio pick up some money from the cash machine on Bond.

The next thing I've been dragged out of the car by a police officer I'm scared on.

I'm really trying to govern my force as toe.

Shapes are becoming like different colors.

I just remember things turn in like they looked a bit radioactive to me because I couldn't.

I knew that I was losing consciousness and I had to beg to God that this will not be the last place.

This will not be the last place that my father will hear about me.

He cannot be watching me and seeing this and seeing that these will be the last words off his daughter On the ninth of May this year during the national lock down a police traffic stop in south east London led to this black people.

This student in her early twenties was caught up in an incident in which the man she was with was pulled over by the police for driving erratically.

He was arrested and later convicted of drunk driving.

She has asked that we protect her identity.

Our understanding is that four officers from the Metropolitan Police admit punching her three repeatedly, and one officer also admits kicking her.

The police say she was resisting being handcuffed and searched as a female civilian to have 678 officers on you.

This has happened to somebody else, and it took just one person.

It took just one person to take their life with use of force by police towards black people under scrutiny, worldwide thes scenes raised further questions, having a male officer using away his body way, burying his knee into my neck and using Aled the power within him, to try cut off my air supply.

I remember asking the female officer who punched me several times I told her I was like that male officer.

My exact words were like, He's killing me.

And I remember seeing a smirk on her face, and her exact response was that if you could talk, you can breathe.

At this point, I know that these people are not here to help me on.

My question is, how am I going to get out of this situation alive and unharmed.

They then pick me up with my hair like with my braids, which they eventually tor out from my scalp because of my body weight.

This arrest was officially recorded by the police.

Is a use of force incident defined as anything from handcuffing at one end of the spectrum through various types of restraint.

Use of police dogs, batons in capacitance spray hitting or striking right through to Taser and firearms Wang use of force incidents, a common the level of force used during this arrest on the number of officers applying it is unusual.

It's significant that this incident happened in May when the whole country was in full lock down a time one might expect the deployment of false by the police towards the general public would be less prevalent.

In fact, figures show just the opposite, there was a rising use of force.

Newsnight has obtained use of force data from 37 out of the 44 police forces in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

During the lock down months of April and May 27 out of the 37 police forces saw a rise in use of force compared to the same month last year.

The Metropolitan Police, which is the biggest police force in the country, saw a rise of 26%.

Greater Manchester 40% Gloucestershire 67%.

Police say this is because calls to them and demand went down in the look down period.

Crime has fallen during the lock down period because of that fall in Crime Cove, it has provided time and space for the police to undertake more proactive policing operations, particularly around drugs and particularly around county lines.

If you do proactive operations of that kind, you'll end up doing a lot more enforcement, making a lot more arrests on dim particular in London, doing a lot of stop and search, Andi.

That's why I think the use of force has increased over this period.

The National Police Chiefs Council agrees.

An uptick in proactive policing saw a rise in use of force, which includes handcuffing and restraint tactics, They said the rise was due also to a notable increase in assaults against emergency services workers since the beginning of the pandemic.

They added that force was rarely used, but where it waas most forms of restraint involved the use of handcuffs.

Home office figures in England and Wales show that black people are disproportionately impacted by use of force there approximately six times more likely to be subjected to force than white people.

This disparity does not apply to other ethnic minorities.

No one would deny that the police themselves wouldn't deny that.

The key question is what is the cause of that disproportionality on?

There's a number of potential reasons for it.

One might be that there's bias on behalf of police officers in a minority of cases.

I think a very small minority of cases it may be racism, for example, in any organization will be people who have racist views on the police, would be no different, but I think that would be a very small minority.

The other potential explanation is that the police focus on particular types of crime.

They focus on particular areas when they're doing this kind of enforcement activity on there will b'more young black people, for example, on the street in those areas, the level of force used against this black woman undoubtedly raises serious questions, as does what she says happened to her while she was in custody here at Lewis and Police Station.

They didn't even tell me they were going to strip search me.

It literally just happened when in the presence off the male and the female officers with my cell door wide open.

So people were passing, they cut my jeans, they cut my underwear, they cut my bra.

I thought this was just them trying to humiliate me more, to dehumanize me even more.

Even though I had offered several times to take off my clothes, they literally stripped me naked on do the same officer that had had his knee buried into my neck came back while I was fully unclothed and There were other Mount officers holding parts of my body.

Male officers should not be present in the strip search of a woman.

What happened during this strip searches against regulations.

A recent stomach operation meant that she was worried about the pressure applied to her by the police holding her down.

And she says that this was why she resisted.

It was the same officer that was punching me outside of the restaurant who still went on to punch me while I was fully unclothed and restrained for no justifiable reason.

She just hit me about I say maybe eight times.

There was a lot of intensity in her and I don't know why.

Theo initial allegations against her of assaulting a police officer and possession of cannabis have bean drops, as has the charge of obstructing a drug search.

The police have not apologized for the way she was treated.

Her experience has changed her perception of the police.

Andi, I shouldn't be, but it's my natural reaction now.

Do you think it's a case that these were just a few bad officers?

Or do you think there is actually institutional racism in the Met?

I feel like there's definitely institutional racism, you know, there's good and bad people everywhere.

You can't just sweep a few bad apples under the rug.

The Met police has toe have a total reform on these sorts of cases on people of color because it's increasingly obvious that there is a problem there.

The Metropolitan Police told us that eight officers involved in these incidents are being investigated by the independent office for police conduct.

Two of the officers have been placed on restricted duties pending investigation.