‘I watched my brother die in police custody – like George Floyd’
George Floyd’s murder one year ago brought back horrific memories for Janet Alder, whose brother Christopher died at a Yorkshire police station
Former paratrooper Christopher Alder, 37, died on the floor of a police station in 1998 with officers standing around him allegedly making racist monkey noises. His sister, Janet Alder, 59, from West Yorkshire, has spent two decades campaigning for justice. She tells her story…
A year has passed since I – along with the rest of the world – watched the video of George Floyd’s life being casually snuffed out in utter horror. Seeing Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes, I even felt my own chest restricting and throat closing.
It reminded me of another black man I’d seen slowly die in police custody – my own brother, Christopher.
We grew up in Hull in the 1960s and 70s and there were five of us kids: Emmanuel, Richard, Christopher, me – the only girl – and Stephen. Our parents had come from Nigeria in search of a better life, but Dad worked all hours and Mum, struggling to raise us, began having psychotic episodes. Our childhood was spent in a children’s home.
Christopher and I, as the middle kids, were especially close. He excelled at sports and dancing. I really looked up to him. As the only black family at school, kids often used the N-word and called me “rubber lips”. But
Christopher protected me.
He had a jokey way of getting through the hard times.
He had strong morals and after school he joined the army. He wanted to fight for his country. For six years he served as a paratrooper in the Falklands and Northern Ireland before returning to Hull to train as a computer programmer.
My brother always helped others. After his death, neighbours wrote saying how he’d run chores. One girl remembered how he’d protected her in a nightclub. No one had a bad word to say about him.
It was on 1 April 1998, when Christopher, then 37 and a separated father-of-two, got into a fight outside a nightclub in Hull.
He’d lost consciousness, and a tooth, before an ambulance took him to hospital accompanied by police officers. His injuries were not deemed life-threatening, so he was discharged then taken into custody.
‘I’d never seen anyone die and I was helpless’
Dragged handcuffed
By the time he arrived at the station, he was unconscious again, missing another tooth, and now had cuts on the lip and above the eye. He was dragged handcuffed into the custody suite, his trousers and boxer shorts around his ankles and his belt missing, and left face down on the floor.
No attempt was made to put him into the recovery position and CCTV footage – which I had to wait two excruciatingly painful years to be allowed to see – showed five officers casually standing around him. For 11 minutes they chatted about what they could possibly charge him with while my brother lay unconscious gasping for breath and gurgling in his own blood as his life seeped away. Then, once it was obvious he was dead, there was talk of “f ***** g
banana boats” and monkey noises were made. In the recent series of TV’S Line Of Duty this detail was featured in a plot – and it was taken from Christopher’s case.
Seeing the footage of my brother – out of reach on the screen – bound, motionless and treated so inhumanely, became the very worst moment of my life. I just stared in shock. I feel sure the Floyd family felt the same way – disbelieving, horrified, powerless. And I am sure they felt, as I did, the devastating frustration when none of the other officers attempted to intervene.
In Christopher’s case, one of the officers even said he was worried about asphyxia. But none of them attempted to move him into the recovery position, let alone take him to hospital.
I’d never seen anyone die, until I was forced to watch my own brother dying in front of my eyes. And I couldn’t do a thing to help. The Floyd family had to witness the life being squeezed out of their beloved’s chest. That’s horrific enough – but then they had to deal with the defence trying to deflect blame on to some supposed “underlying health conditions”.
We had the same experience. In Christopher’s case the Home Office pathologist, in his original autopsy, suggested Christopher may have died of “cardiac arrhythmia” rather than asphyxia. It made no sense to us as there was no evidence and Christopher, as an ex-paratrooper, was fighting fit. The autopsy was then used to justify not charging the officers involved.
Later, Christopher’s heart was examined by a cardiologist. He told me, “You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see Christopher died because of the position he’d been left in and the fact no one had tried to help him.”
Gathering evidence
It took almost four years of us battling until the CPS agreed in October 2001 to prosecute the officers for gross negligence manslaughter. Like the Floyds, we had to obtain the required medical evidence for this ourselves. Even once we had done so, in my opinion the CPS delayed and delayed. In 2002, five officers were eventually charged with manslaughter and misconduct, but were acquitted.
But there was more horror in store. In 2000, we had finally been given Christopher’s body – or so we thought – to be laid to rest. Using money I had been given from a newspaper interview, and people’s kind donations, we held a beautiful burial to give Christopher the send-off he deserved. There was a procession through Hull, we ordered flowers spelling out his name and even a horse and cart. The church was packed.
Yet it wasn’t until 11 years later that we discovered we’d been mourning the wrong body. We had not buried our beloved Christopher, but instead the body of Grace Kamara, a 77-year-old Nigerian woman.
Grace had died in 1999 in Hull, from natural causes. Immediately, a close friend had begun the laborious process of applying for visas for Grace’s African family to attend the funeral. Inexplicably, the
visas were subjected to endless delays. It was not until 2011 that Grace’s relatives had their visas approved and prepared for the burial, scheduled for 4 November, 2011.
As part of Nigerian custom, her relatives demanded a lace scarf be buried with Grace’s coffin. Which is when the council made a terrible admission. Grace’s body was not, in fact, in the mortuary where it was supposed to be. It had been buried as Christopher back in 2000.
A criminal investigation was ordered into this so-called “mix-up” and it was carried out by South Yorkshire Police. It concluded in May 2013 that mortuary workers did indeed have a “case to answer” and had missed at least 10 opportunities to report what had happened. But in October that year, the CPS said it would not prosecute anyone.
We ended up holding a second funeral, this time for our actual brother, in 2012, 14 years after his death.
Despite an inquest ruling a verdict of unlawful killing, no individual or organisation has ever been officially held to account for what happened to Christopher. Thankfully, as a result of the worldwide protests, the Floyd family will see Chauvin serve time in jail for his crime. I am desperate for Christopher to have the same justice. It is encouraging that the Black Lives Matter movement is making a real impact now. But we must keep the pressure on if justice is to be served.
Janet Alder is crowdfunding to get justice for her brother. For information, go to fundrazr. com/christopheralder. South Yorkshire Police said it is “aware of the concerns raised by
Mrs Alder” and is “exploring the detail of those concerns”. We approached them for further comment before going to press