A black teenager who claims he has been treated as a gang member by police rather than as a victim of county lines grooming is bringing what is thought to be the first complaint of its kind against the Metropolitan police for failing to protect him.
The 19-year-old is in hiding from the gang he says kidnapped him and tried to force him to get involved in committing crimes for them.
He says that even before he was exploited by the county lines gang he was a victim of racist stereotyping by the Met because of his ethnicity and that he was falsely accused of being involved in various crimes in which he was later found to have had no involvement.
The legal complaint, launched last Friday, claims in a letter before action that police failed in their duty to protect and safeguard him, failed to treat him as a victim and racially stereotyped him. He has accused the police of breaching the Equality Act and the Human Rights Act.
He is suffering from mental health problems as a result of his county lines exploitation and the lack of support he received.
From the age of 15 he went missing from school on several occasions. His mother reported these incidents to the police but says that no action was taken. At the age of 16 he left school and joined the army. He claims he was wrongly accused of being in a gang rather than being a victim of gang exploitation simply because he knew people who grew up in the same neighbourhood as him who were believed by police to be gang members.
Even after he joined the army, the grooming continued, the legal letter states, and on one occasion he was found in Scotland after going missing because of being exploited by the gang.
He claims he was kidnapped by the gang in October last year, held captive at a house in London and beaten up. He managed to use his phone to call 999 while he was being held by the gang, but despite providing the address to police he claims that nothing was done to help him.
He managed to escape from the gang after a few days and then had a mental breakdown on Oxford Street in London. He was taken to hospital and is now receiving out-patient treatment for his mental health problems.
One gang member who had been imprisoned sent him a threatening Snapchat message after his release, saying: “I’m out, will be seeing you very soon.”
The teenager’s mother said: “As a mum, I have tried my utmost to protect my children from harm. I have raised concerns with the police for a few years now that my son is being groomed but I was ignored. I had to flee my home, leave my job; my daughter is out of school. I have no stable accommodation and threats have been made to our family. The only thing I have left now is my voice and this is why I have decided to share what has happened.”
Attiq Malik of Liberty Law Solicitors, who is representing the complainant against the Met, said: “It is extremely concerning that children who are victims of grooming and modern slavery consistently fail to receive the support and attention that is required for them from public authorities such as the police and are instead categorised and treated as gang members simply because of narratives and stereotypes associated with their race.”
Kevin Blowe, the campaigns coordinator at the police monitoring organisation Netpol, said: “The Metropolitan police’s whole approach to its war on ‘county lines’ is fuelled by racist stereotypes about young black people and about the neighbourhoods where they live.
“For anyone who becomes a victim of crime like the claimant in this case, the stigma of unfair association with a gang not only means more stop and searches and more likelihood of wrongful arrest but also clouds their relationship with other services who are supposed to help and support them. It is little wonder so few are prepared or even able to bring a legal challenge of this kind.”
The Met has been approached for comment.
