Amid ongoing emergencies, including a would-be autocrat on his way to possibly regaining the American presidency and Israel’s war on Gaza (not to mention the flare-ups of global climate change), the U.S. has slipped quietly toward an assault on civil liberties as an answer to plummeting mental health. From coast to coast, state lawmakers of both parties are reaching for coercive treatment and…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On 14 July, the Department for Education (DfE) published new guidance on strip searching children in schools. This follows the safeguarding review on the strip search of schoolgirl Child Q, which urged the department to revise its guidance for schools.
The new guidance urges school staff to advocate for pupils and to consider their mental and physical wellbeing when thinking about calling the police. But its allowance of strip searches on school grounds undermines its purported goal of keeping children safe.
We must demand an end to the police’s use of this degrading and humiliating practice, especially against children. Ultimately, we need to seek safe and supportive ways to deal with the issues that impact children’s lives.
In March, a safeguarding review revealed that two Metropolitan Police officers conducted a strip search against a Black schoolgirl, known as Child Q, while she was on her period. The search took place on school grounds with her teachers’ knowledge but without an appropriate adult present.
Police stripped the child and forced her to expose her “intimate body parts”. They made the child remove her sanitary pad, and didn’t let her wash before returning to an exam.
Teachers and police subjected Child Q to this dehumanising treatment because school staff wrongly suspected her of carrying cannabis. The safeguarding review concluded that “Child Q should never have been strip searched”.
Speaking to the devastating impact of her experience, Child Q told the safeguarding review panel:
I don’t know if I’m going to feel normal again… But I do know this can’t happen to anyone, ever again.
In May, it was revealed that Met police also strip searched a 15-year-old mixed-race Black girl. This girl, known as Olivia, was also on her period at the time. Olivia attempted to take her own life following this traumatic incident.
The police watchdog is investigating 10 other cases of officers strip searching children.
In February, a freedom of information (FoI) request by researcher Tom Kemp revealed that the Metropolitan Police’s use of strip search was on the rise.
The researcher found that Black people were overrepresented in those targeted with strip search. Kemp also noted a concerning number of children included in these figures.
And in July, an FoI request by LBC found that from 2019 to 2021, police strip searched 799 minors who were not in custody. They were between the ages of 10 and 17.
The figures reveal extreme racial disproportionality in officers’ use of the degrading tactic. Over half of the children strip searched during this period were Black. 75% – amounting to 607 children – were from racially minoritised backgrounds. Only one in five were white.
As was the case for Child Q, police conducted most of these searches due to suspected criminalised drug offences. Officers took no further action in just under half of these cases. This reflects the harmful and ineffective nature of racist ‘gangs’ and ‘county lines’ policing, which racially minoritised young people bear the brunt of.
The DfE’s newly published guidance on searching, screening and confiscation for schools comes after the Child Q safeguarding review urged the department to revise its guidance.
But the new guidance creates an alarming narrative that in some cases, it’s ok for police to strip search a child.
Garden Court Chambers barrister Michael Etienne told The Canary:
the guidance presumes that the use of strip searches is something that should even be allowed in schools.
The barrister raised concerns that the guidance sets out vague recommendations for school staff. For example, the guidance states that staff should “advocate for pupil wellbeing”. But it offers no guidance on how teachers can actually enact this.
Etienne told The Canary::
Once the police have been called and arrive at the school gates, the guidance puts teachers in the passive position of merely “advocating” for the safety of the pupil but offers no explanation for what that means.
The barrister was keen to note that head teachers have statutory powers to refuse entry to the police and can order officers to leave school grounds. This vital information is not included in the DfE’s guidance.
Etienne added that the guidance does little to clarify the difference between a strip search (the removal of outer clothing) and an intimate search (the exposure and/or inspection of intimate parts of the body).
He said:
That is particularly important given that some of what is reported to have happened to Child Q is likely to amount to an intimate search.
The guidance also fails to mention the adultification bias – the racist perception and treatment of Black children as adults. Adultification played a key role in Child Q’s devastating case.
Highlighting the need for cultural and structural transformation to ensure that what happened to Child Q doesn’t happen again, Etienne said:
Overall, the guidance will do nothing to change the culture of deference between schools and police officers. Teachers are essentially cast as observers. That is typical of the culture that enabled the strip search of Child Q.
He concluded:
The DfE’s response is rushed, superficial and still stubbornly rooted in a dependence on criminal justice responses to issues of child safety.
In the wake of Child Q’s humiliating experience, a coalition of groups working to end strip search emerged.
The End Strip Search coalition, which includes 4FRONT, Kids of Colour and No More Exclusions, asserts that the practice can never be safe. It states:
Even when ‘safeguards’ are in place, like parents being notified or an appropriate adult acting as a witness, the strip search experience is still one of trauma. A child is always traumatised, whether protocol is followed or not.
It adds:
Nothing a child could hide in their body is worth them being sexually assaulted. Whether something is found or not, a child is harmed in a way that has deep ramifications for their mental health, and their future. There is no justification.
Indeed, there are no circumstances in which a child can be protected from harm while being strip searched – or even threatened with strip search – by police. With this in mind, the allowance of strip searches in schools in the DfE’s new guidance undermines the very concept of child safeguarding.
We must call for an immediate end to the traumatic and dehumanising practice of strip search, particularly against children. Those looking to join the campaign can sign up for updates on actions, events and opportunities to get involved via the End Strip Search website.
In the meantime, it is vital that adults are prepared to limit children’s contact with police, and to fiercely advocate for children during police interactions when they happen.
Teachers – don’t invite police onto school grounds. Police are not equipped to prevent harm or to deal with the complex social issues that impact children’s lives. Their job is to criminalise.
For the rest of us, this means resisting the presence of police in schools and intervening in every police stop we witness on the streets. It means withdrawing consent from all forms of policing. And it means demanding funding for specialist services that support vulnerable children and young people.
More broadly, we must create a culture in which we keenly listen to children’s experiences of policing – and believe them. It’s time we start treating children with respect, not suspicion.
Featured image via John Hale/Unsplash resized 770 x 403 px
This article includes a recounting of self-harm and discussion of suicide.
A mother has spoken about how police strip searched her 15-year-old child, who later tried to kill herself. The teenager’s family is now bringing a civil case against the police.
This comes just after Child Q’s harrowing experience of being strip searched by police. In fact, police have strip searched roughly 50 children a week over the last five years. The mother, who spoke to the BBC, shared details of her daughter’s traumatising experience from December 2020. This was the same month in which Child Q was strip searched.
The BBC detailed that Olivia (name changed to protect identity) is mixed-race and autistic. Olivia’s mum said that:
Olivia had been out with some friends when they had an argument with two boys, who called the police and alleged they were the victims of an attempted knife-point robbery. She was searched by police at the scene and nothing was discovered. Olivia and her friends were then arrested.
Olivia’s mum (who the BBC report calls Lisa – another pseudonym) warned the police over the phone that Olivia had been self-harming. Olivia handed over a small blade that she used to self-harm. Whilst changing her clothes, a sharpened stick fell from her clothes. It was another item she used to self-harm. But when the police noticed it, six officers handcuffed her and “forcibly stripped her”. They then carried out what the BBC called:
an intimate search in the presence of male officers.
It bears repeating that Olivia is a vulnerable child who was in a distressed state. Why the police thought it acceptable to seize her and strip search her is beyond comprehension. Olivia’s mum also said that:
Olivia was actually on her period at the time too. And they cut off her underwear in front of these grown male officers. She was absolutely distraught.
In the time since she was strip searched, Olivia has continued to self-harm and has also attempted suicide.
What happened to Olivia is enraging and terrifying. This is yet another example of shocking police behaviour. It is, however, also important to pay attention to the fact that Olivia is mixed-race and autistic. There have been many instances in which police have treated autistic people in a violently ableist manner.
Earlier in May, a 12-year-old Black autistic boy was allegedly assaulted by a white woman. Antwon Forrest was left with a deep gash in his head. Avon and Somerset police initially told his family that they would take no further action. But the force have now classified the incident as a racist attack. And they’ve also apologised for their response to the case. They will be reviewing it, but their initial actions speak for themselves.
Moreover, in 2020 a police officer dragged an autistic boy across the floor in a special-needs school in Liverpool. Incredibly, the officer was part of a “safer schools” unit. Christopher Cruise was convicted of assault; he retired before he could be sacked. The officer was fined and didn’t serve any time in prison. A relative of the boy who was assaulted said:
He has autism and he struggles a lot. He is much younger in his head, more like a five-year-old.
We are all absolutely furious. His days are hard enough already.
Also in 2020, a parent came forward to say that police pointed a taser at their 12-year-old autistic son. The parent said that when a pair of shoes no longer fit her son, he became extremely distressed:
He was an 11-year-old boy in autistic distress – overwhelmed, frightened, anxious and unable to regulate these feelings.
When neighbours called the police due to the noise, the parent said that:
Four police officers restrained my son and placed him in handcuffs. Having heightened sensitivity to touch, this increased my son’s discomfort to intolerable levels. Without freedom of movement, his primary mechanism of self-regulation – pacing and rocking – was restricted.
While the police dragged her son away kicking and screaming, the boy yelled out:
Help me Mummy, help me Mummy, I’m being kidnapped.
There are almost certainly many other cases in which the police have abused autistic people.
The epidemic of police violence against Black people, disabled people, immigrants and other minorities shows that neurodiversity training isn’t enough. Training isn’t going to deal with the rot at the heart of British policing. The police are institutionally racist and ableist, and there’s no amount of training that will change that. As the Independent’s race correspondent Nadine White argued, Black children are under attack by police.
The Metropolitan police have referred themselves to a police watchdog over the incident with Olivia. But as law magazine The Justice Gap reported:
More than half of these searches were conducted by the Metropolitan Police and a disproportionate number of black and mixed-race children were subjected to this process.
A police force which can strip search children and leave them traumatised is a police force that is beyond repair. Olivia’s experiences are haunting. A mixed-race child with autism was violently attacked by officers who outnumbered her. This is indefensible. But we know the usual suspects will try to defend such behaviour.
We can’t rely on the police investigating themselves – we have to rely on each other. It’s now more important than ever to observe the police in public. Cop watching organisations are available to help people learn how to legally observe and document police behaviour. As for police violence behind closed doors, we must speak loudly and clearly that we will not let them keep hurting our children.
Featured image via Unsplash/Colin Lloyd
This post was originally published on The Canary.
Content warning: this article contains material some readers may find distressing
Grassroots groups including the 4Front Project, No Police in Schools, No More Exclusions, Sisters Uncut and Hackney Copwatch have come together to demand an end to the degrading and humiliating practice of strip search, particularly against children. This comes in the wake of news about the Metropolitan Police’s traumatising strip-search of a Black schoolgirl – known as Child Q.
On 14 March, the City of London & Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership published its Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review. The review details two Metropolitan Police officers’ strip search of Child Q at her Hackney secondary school in 2020.
Teachers referred the schoolchild to police claiming that she smelled of cannabis. The child’s teachers allowed officers to conduct an intimate search without supervision by an appropriate adult.
The review explains that officers stripped the child and forced her to expose her “intimate body parts”. They made the child – who was on her period at the time – remove her sanitary pad. They then made the child “bend over [and] spread her legs… whilst coughing”.
In her testimony reflecting on the traumatic incident, Child Q said:
Someone walked into the school, where I was supposed to feel safe, took me away from the people who were supposed to protect me and stripped me naked, while on my period.
She added:
I don’t know if I’m going to feel normal again. […] But I do know this can’t happen to anyone else, ever again.
The child has launched civil proceedings against the Met and her school. The force has removed the officers who were involved in the search from frontline duties, but they remain on desk duties.
According to the review on Child Q’s case, police strip searched 25 other children in Hackney over 2020/21.
And as reported by The Canary in March, a freedom of information request submitted by criminology researcher Tom Kemp found that Met officers carried out over 9,000 strip searches on children between 2016 and 2021.
4Front founder and director Temi Mwale has calculated that this equates to five children every day in the last five years. This includes over 2,000 under 16s and 35 children under the age of 12.
The Met disproportionately uses strip search powers against Black Londoners. Although Black people make up 13% of London’s general population, 35% of the force’s strip searches between 2016 and 2021 were against Black people.
In a powerful video urging people to support the campaign to end strip search, Mwale said:
This is state sanctioned sexual assault. At 4Front more than 60% of our current members have been strip searched more than once. Not just in schools – in police stations, the back of a police van, in the homes of children and even on the street.
A spokesperson for the Met Police told The Canary:
Officers are highly trained around the use of stop and search. Part of the training is around unbiased decision making, unconscious bias and the impact of the use of these powers on communities.
The #EndStripSearch campaign has shared some children and young people’s testimonies of their experiences of strip-search. One young person told youth and community workers:
I got strip searched three times in one night. The first time was enough. The second time was ‘whoa what are you lot doing?’ and the third time I gave up. What can I do? I couldn’t do nothing, so I gave up.
Sharing their experience of officers taunting them during searches, they added:
Things like that can change a person’s mind, you know. From a little kid. Imagine being 14, 15, 16. You’re in a room with grown men, four strangers, grown men telling you take off your clothes, bend over and squat. They’re watching you. They’re watching you – and the funny thing is they are bantering, they’re laughing about it.
Speaking to their dehumanising experience of strip-search, another young person said:
Showing your private parts to the people that you’ve never met before. Just […] feels degrading and it feels like it’s just a very really nasty feeling to be honest about how you feel inside. And afterwards I went back to the cell, feeling very down and not in the right headspace. […] I just felt a lot less human.
Reflecting on the devastating impact that the practice has on children and young people’s wellbeing, Mwale said:
The impact that this is having on Black youth is so extreme and we have to fight for their rights. It’s humiliating, it’s degrading and it’s dehumanising. And the long-term impact on children’s mental health is so significant.
She added:
It should not be legal. If the law says it’s justifiable for the police to strip children naked, then we have to change the law. That’s why we have to end strip search.
Stating that “we do not underestimate the impact that the use of stop and search has on some individuals”, a spokesperson for the Met Police told The Canary:
We work closely with communities in London and understand that stop and search can have a significant and lasting impact on someone, especially an MTIP (More Thorough Search where Intimate Parts are exposed) and strip searches in custody. Every search must be lawful, proportionate and necessary and carried out with respect, dignity and empathy.
But emphasising the need to abolish the practice altogether, #EndStripSearch campaigners say:
Even when ‘safeguards’ are in place, like parents being notified or an appropriate adult acting as a witness, the strip search experience is still one of trauma. A child is always traumatised, whether protocol is followed or not.
They add:
Nothing a child could hide in their body is worth them being sexually assaulted. Whether something is found or not, a child is harmed in a way that has deep ramifications for their mental health, and their future. There is no justification.
The coalition is urging people to promote the campaign to end strip search by galvanising support and sharing information about police’s use of the degrading practice using the hashtag #EndStripSearch. Supporters can keep up-to-date with the campaign by signing up for updates on its website.
Featured image via Oliver Hale/Unsplash (cropped to 770×403 px)
This post was originally published on The Canary.