Protests are planned across Britain in solidarity with a Black schoolgirl who was strip-searched by police while on her period after wrongly being accused of cannabis possession.
The teenager, who was 15 years old at the time, was subjected to a “traumatic” search by Metropolitan Police officers at the end of 2020 while attending school without another adult present, and in the knowledge that she was menstruating, a safeguarding review published on Monday concluded.
The report, which refers to the girl as Child Q, said that racism “was likely to have been an influencing factor” in the decision to carry out the search.
After teachers called the police to the girl’s school, they conducted a strip search where the schoolgirl’s intimate body parts were exposed and she was made to take off her sanitary towel, according to the review.
Over 9,000 children were strip searched by the Met Police in the last five years including 35 children under 12, Freedom of Information data submitted in February shows.
It comes as the government’s equalities minister claimed that public outrage over the case shows that Britain is “a country that cares about ethnic minorities.”
Kemi Badenoch was being challenged over her new Inclusive Britain strategy – based on the controversial Sewell report which denied the existence of structural racism.
She said: “What we do know is that everybody is rightly appalled and outraged by what happened to Child Q. That is an example of a country that cares about ethnic minorities, and about children in the system,” she said.
Kids of Colour, a campaigning group geared at exposing institutional racism, was to hold a protest in St Peter’s Square, Manchester, last night.
It is an extension of their ongoing collaborative #NoPoliceInSchools campaign with Northern Police Monitoring Project (NPMP) and the National Education Union’s (NEU) Northwest Black Member’s Organising Forum. The drive is “united by shared concerns over the increasing presence of police in schools in Greater Manchester and beyond”.
Protest group Hackney Cop Watch’s demonstration will take place outside Stoke Newington police station on Friday at 4pm and further activity is being planned by the Hackney branch of Stand Up To Racism from 5pm at the same location.
Another demonstration, organised by editor Jacqueline Courtenay, is scheduled to begin on Sunday.
“As a concerned mother, I have decided to create a space that is community-minded, parent-focused, family-friendly and allows the community to come together in solidarity with Child Q at quite simply, a very sad and difficult time,” Ms Courtenay told The Independent.
“This march is for anyone who has been as moved as I have been by this case which exudes institutional racism in all its most horrifying forms, exemplifying the sheer lack of regard educators and law enforcement have towards Black children.
“A phenomenon that was a terrible indictment of Britain decades ago – and remains an awful indictment of modern day Britain which generally sees itself as a non-racist society.”
Prominent equalities campaigner Patrick Vernon is supporting this upcoming action and told The Independent that Black communities are “sickened and angry about the violation and state rape of this young girl”.
“We need full accountability and prosecutions. The commander of Hackney Police needs to resign; like the Windrush Scandal, warm apologies are now outdated,” he said.
In a statement published on Thursday, a group Black women Labour MPs condemned the treatment of Child Q and said: “The home secretary must put ending the scourge of institutional racism and sexism in the Metropolitan Police at the heart of choosing the next commissioner, and urgently restore the principle of policing with consent.”
This comes as Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, told The Independent on Thursday morning that the officers involved in the Child Q strip search should “not be police officers”.
In a letter to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), which is finalising an investigation into the matter following a referral in May 2021, Mr Khan called for the officers involved to answer for gross misconduct contraventions instead of the simple misconduct breaches currently levied against them.
He described reading the report with “dismay and disgust”, writing in the letter to the IOPC: “I understand that in line with statutory guidance, allegations of discrimination would normally be considered at the level of gross misconduct rather than misconduct.”
“I have been clear that London’s police service must have the trust and confidence of the public they serve and incidents such as those experienced by Child Q, not only foster distrust in the Met but actively hamper any efforts to police by consent.”
Mr Khan told The Independent: “The obvious point is: this girl is Black. And, though the Met commissioner and Police Federation may not like it, I’m quite clear that we need a commissioner who understands that these are serious, deep cultural issues that need addressing but also has a plan to win back the trust and confidence,”
“You can’t on the one hand complain when victims and witnesses aren’t coming forward because of lack of trust and confidence and not have a plan to bring it back.”
The mayor would like to see these officers be dismissed, he added. “In my view, these police officers should not be police officers but it’s important for there to be due process – I think they’re entitled to that.
“The teachers have got to explain their actions...I don’t understand what was going through their head. You’ve got a 15 year old child going through her mocks, the teachers “smell cannabis” – in inverted commas – and their response was to call police? I don’t follow what their thinking was so, again, there’s got to be due process.
“Since this happened, the police officers and teachers have been going about their work; there’s been no change.”
The politician has previously called for more police officers to be stationed within schools to combat violent crime sweeping the capital. Critics of Mr Khan say that he, along with ministers who lobby for enhanced law enforcement presence in learning environments, are inadvertently complicit in the case of Child Q.
However, Mr Khan argued that those campaigners are “conflating a number of issues” and maintains his support for school-based police officers.
“The reality is – and it’s important to get the facts right – the officers involved in the search of Child Q were not school officers; in fact the school officer wasn’t there,” he said. “It’s really important for people not to wrongly associate school officers with the search of Child Q. In fact, in my view, school police officers (typically) have a relationship with the child and aren’t prejudice because they see the child on a regular basis.”
Recent figures from City Hall shows that all types of serious violence experienced by young people have fallen over the last four years – and the mayor attributes this, in part, to the presence of specially trained police officers in schools.
“It’s so important not to assume that because this particular search was at a school, it was done by school officers and so we shouldn’t have school officers working with the community. We’ve seen over the last period not just knife crime going down (...) but also we’ve seen youth violence going down. There are lots of reasons for this; one is a public health approach towards violent crime and (...) it’s worth saying that a lot of school officers are involved in these programmes so they’re playing a role in reducing violent crime.”
Mr Khan has called upon the Department for Education (DfE) to take urgent action, beyond the limitations of Hackney Council, and “address serious failings”.
A DfE spokesperson said: “This was a distressing incident which should not have happened. We are in touch with the school in question, where staff are taking steps to support the child involved and her family.”
“Schools should be places where pupils feel safe and protected, which is why we have strengthened our safeguarding guidance and extended it to all schools and post-16 settings – staff should receive regular safeguarding training to improve their confidence in managing sensitive situations.”
