When Lee Lawrence’s son, Brandon, picked him up from hospital after a minor operation recently, Brandon thought he saw a car following them. Lawrence looked round and told his son he didn’t think it was anything to worry about. But then the car – which turned out to be an undercover police vehicle – put its siren on. It overtook them and did a hard stop. “I expected to see guns come out next,” says Lawrence. “I thought: ‘What the hell is going on?’ I got upset. My son was trying to calm me down, because I was thinking: ‘How could this be happening to my son?’”
Lawrence was 11 when his mother, Cherry Groce, was shot and paralysed in 1985 by an armed police officer during a botched raid on her home. Community fury over Groce’s shooting would spark a two-day uprising in Brixton, south London.
