The police are supposed to protect us. But Black people cannot assume they will
Acouple of weeks ago, my friend texted our group chat. She’d witnessed a couple fighting in the street and, after watching it escalate, had called the police. The suspect was a Black man, the potential victim a Black woman.
My friend was asking the group whether we thought she’d done the right thing – because her husband believed she’d called the police too quickly. It sparked a debate. Some staunchly believed that when a woman was potentially being attacked, the police should always be called. Others were worried that calling the police would only make matters worse, that my friend may have misinterpreted what she had seen, and that the police would view the man as a threat, the situation could escalate, and that he could end up being put in danger. Their preference instead would have been to speak to the man directly and see if they could calm the situation down.
You may think this is a strange discussion: surely everyone should call the police if they see an attack like this? But though all our group chat members are professionals in our 30s, nearly all of us are Black. And though none of us has any previous convictions, we know only too well that the simple act of calling the police on a Black man can be a risk to his life. None of us disputed this – we simply disagreed on whether that risk was worth it in this particular scenario.
As if to reinforce our misgivings, days later an inquuest jury considering the death of 35-year-old Kevin Clarke found that the way Metropolitan police officers had restrained him had probably contributed to his death.
Clarke was a vulnerable Black man with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Police had been called out by the Jigsaw Project, who supported him in his residential housing, after a deterioration in his mental health. Despite officers being aware of his vulnerabilities, his appearing to be generally cooperative and responsive and his repeatedly asserting that he couldn’t breathe, the police restraints continued and he died in custody at Lewisham hospital.
Sadly, Clarke’s story isn’t a oneoff, it’s part of a systemic pattern. The statistics show that the police are more likely to view Black people as a threat. A New Statesmen analysis last year found that Black people were the ethnic group most likely to suffer every violent tactic by police in England and Wales – from handcuffing to dog bites to use of firearms. Black people are also the most likely to be stopped and searched: almost 10 times more than their white counterparts.
All of these disparities are disproportionate not only in relation to the number of Black people, but also in relation to actual criminality