Youth groups quiz police watchdog following death of Rashan Charles
Rashan Jermaine Charles. Photograph: Twitter
Young people from Hackney met the boss of the country’s police watchdog on Tuesday following the death of Rashan Charles.
The 20-year-old died in hospital last week after being chased and manhandled by a police officer.
A vigil held in Charles’ memory on Monday saw hundreds of angry protestors take to Stoke Newington High Street, with many carrying banners reading ‘No justice, no peace’.
In an attempt to calm what it describes as “community tensions”, Hackney Council for Voluntary Service (CVS) hosted a meeting earlier this week between Cindy Butts, who heads up the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), and young people from the borough.
The event, also attended by Mayor of Hackney Philip Glanville and the council’s community safety chief Caroline Selman, gave members of two local groups – Young People’s Stop and Search Monitoring Group (YPSSMG) and The Crib – a chance to express their views on Charles’ death.
The youngsters also learned about the IPCC and its investigation procedures.
YPSSMG’s Dami Okusaga said the event was a “welcome step” in building relations, adding: “The meeting provided a good opportunity to understand in a little more detail what the IPCC actually does, but it was also clear where there were still gaps.
“The meeting also highlighted the real issues between the community and the police and it was nice to have the Mayor in attendance informing the audience, what actions he took and what he intends to do from here onwards in relation to this incident.”
Angry: demonstrators carry placards at the vigil for Rashan Charles. Photograph: Hackney Citizen
Mayor Glanville called for a “transparent and rigorous investigation”, saying: “The death of Rashan Charles has left many people shocked, hurt and angry. It was extremely powerful to listen to the concerns, questions and fears of those young people who attended the meeting.
“We are committed to doing everything we can to make sure that those concerns are heard. We welcome the very early involvement of the IPCC and their commitment to working with Rashan’s family and engaging with the community.
“Rashan should not have died on Saturday morning and it is vital that the investigation is as transparent, rigorous and thorough as possible. In the meantime, we would urge people to engage with that process, to stay calm at this difficult time and to ensure protests are peaceful.”
The role of the IPCC is to investigate the most serious complaints involving police in England and Wales. It is an independent organisation, and not part of the police.
Cindy Butts, one of the IPCC Commissioners, said: “Tuesday night was a really valuable opportunity to meet and speak with young members of the community. I was hugely impressed with their contributions and questions, and I welcome the chance to keep up this engagement as our investigation continues.
“People are understandably concerned about what happened, and I am committed to overseeing a thorough and independent investigation that seeks to answer the questions that people have about the tragic death of Rashan Charles.”
If you have any information that might help the investigation, please contact kingslandroad@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk
What these youth groups should be telling young Black people, is that the risk of losing their lives when coming into hostile police contact, can be drastically decreased, by complying. That means not fleeing, not swallowing drugs or putting up resistance.
Oh yes let’s all become compliant passive citizens. What a joyful world that will be.
Meanwhile …
Demonstrators block road in London in protest at death of Rashan Charles
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jul/28/demonstrators-dalston-london-protest-death-rashan-charles
If l was running away and out of breath while being chased by anyone let alone the police then l would need all the breath l could get. Sticking something in my throats and blocking my windpipe would place great strain on my heart as l would be fighting for breath. I might survive but then l might not. The above assumes good health. What was in the recovered packet? Were they drugs? If yes then the blame lies there.
If he was being chased because of drugs, then the blame lies with successive idiot governments who continually refuse to decriminalise drugs.
Russell Shaw Higgs do you honestly believe that we shouldn’t be law abiding citizens and that drugs shouldn’t be illegal? I find it difficult to believe someone can remove all fault from a person carrying drugs then resisting arrest and somehow think that it’s of our country’s laws which are to blame, which are in place to us all safe.
In my opinion people like Russell Shaw Higgs, a white socialist, trouble making so called political activist, has no business commenting on subjects like this. The only thing he brings to the table is his brand of divide and rule.
Not all laws exist to “keep us safe”. Some laws are only in place because those who hold and crave power are puritanical, small minded, idiots. And therefore as autonomous adults it is up to us, as individuals, whether or not we choose to recognise those laws.
You can google constructive information from Portugal, where all drugs have been decriminalised since 2001. You can google the rational recommendations offered to the UK government by David Nutt and his colleagues.
And you can talk to individual members of the police, as I have, and discover just how much of their time and limited resources are wasted by the UK’s illogical and outdated drugs laws.
Russell Shaw Higgs
That is one moronic statement about passive citizens when LIFE is at stake
So you would risk your life tather than comply?
It depends on how you cherish life.
Ashley, what it depends upon is how much I cherish my automous, self directed, adulthood. And how I, and many other citizens, do not recognise the existence of anybody holding heirarchicical authority above us.
Laws are put in place for the good of the many, some may be idiotic and outdated, but we have to follow them. It’s our responsibility to change them if we can, not our responsibility to choose whether we follow them or not. I don’t want to do 20mph in my car outside schools but I understand that for the good of the many that law is in place. If your not trying to change the laws you don’t agree with your just breaking the law because you don’t like it. You are in the wrong, not the law.
So you do not recognise head teachers, police, senior nurses, higher education etc.
So you would never call the police if your family was at risk or under attsck???
John and Ashley, I shall attempt to be more articulate on this topic. And then I’m going to step away from my phone for the rest of the day.
As an example regarding the law – This week marked the 50th anniversary of the 1967 sexual offences act. Most men who have sex with other men were rarely ever in any doubt that all laws that previously criminalised their behaviour were utter nonsense. And for decades and decades and decades, a very significant number of men rightfully chose not to follow those laws. Because those laws served absolutely no rational purpose at all.
As for head teachers, police, senior nurses etc – let me clarify. I stated that I, and many other citizens, do not recognise anybody’s claim to be a hierarchical authority above us. Therefore we only recognise head teachers, police, senior nurses etc as being other adults who are equal to us. We communicate, negotiate, interact and sometimes rely upon their skills or services as equals.
I hope that’s clearer.
And of course we can turn our thoughts to someone like ROSA PARKS as another historical example of someone choosing to disobey yet another idiotic and irrational law.
Russell
I fully agree that bad laws should be challenged. But there are ways to do it. Laws do not prevent crime – murders, rapes, burglaries, even motoring offences still happen, but when people transgress then they are punished – many of us feel our crimes are punished too harshly, while the indiscretions of others are treated too leniently. Life/society isn’t perfect. But many laws exist to try and prevent people from harming themselves even to the attempted regulation of how much sugar we consume.
Drugs fall into that category. Personally I feel that our attitude to drug use is far too lenient and that short sentences for small drug possession would be sensible particularly if it meant that an individuals drug use became known to an employer. Sentences for those higher up the supply network should face even tougher punishment than they do today.
On the other hand there are people who value individual liberty and reject any suggestion that their activity should be regulated in any way.
But if you do not recognise anybody else to be in hierarchical authority over you, and you promote that view, you are leading others into danger. You are not a team player – there is no I in team – and society is a very big team.
These debates about our current drug laws, prohibition of homosexuality in Britain prior to the late 1960s, previous cases involving deaths in custody and the limits of personal freedom are all very nice but I’m not sure where they get us in terms of finding out the truth about this specific death.
Where is the evidence Rashan Charles had anything to do with drugs? Where is the evidence police action caused his death? He died in hospital, so maybe the medics are guilty. Anything is a possibility right now because we don’t know the facts. Yes, there is a video of a police officer appearing to wrestle with this young man on the floor of a shop. What does this prove?
For the record, I agree with Russell about the insanity of our drug laws, but I don’t see the relevance.
This young man’s family must be going through hell. They have remained dignified. They have condemned the small minority of thugs who have used his death as an excuse to riot, the scumbags who are so certain of the facts that they believe this entitles them to take the law into their own hands, to attack police officers and threaten bystanders (I look forward to replies assuring me the hated mainstream media was making it all up and there were no riots the other night).
Innocent until proven guilty applies as much to white police officers accused of brutality as it does to young black men in police custody. In cases like this we either wait for the proper coronial process to discover the cause of death and, if it comes to it, a trial to determine any individual’s guilt or innocence, or we have mob rule directed via social media.
Apologies for the treatise but I don’t think this can be said often enough: You either have law and order and faith that the system will eventually, maybe after a long wait, deliver truth and justice, or you revert to medieval-style witchhunts and, ultimately, a kind of dictatorship by a violent and ideologically-obsessed band of extremists who believe that they and only they are right and so they can do whatever they like to anyone.
I’m all for debates about prejudice and discrimination in society and what can be done to reduce or eliminate it, but when it comes to specific events like the death of Rashan Charles, beware making assumptions and jumping to definite conclusions based on emotion, ideology, very small amounts of information and a complete absence of facts.
Very well put Josh.
Fundamentally Josh, we comment, we debate, we converse, we promote varied ideas and perspectives, because we can not trust or rely upon journalists alone to report or highlight the things that matter most.
Everything occurs within a context. Here is an example of the wider context from just this past week …
“Donald Trump seemingly endorses police brutality”
“His comments were followed by laughter and applause”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-long-island-brutality-police-suffolk-a7866071.html
A few more thoughts in reply to Josh.
Josh mentions a “violent and ideologically-obsessed band of extremists who believe that they and only they are right and so they can do whatever they like to anyone.”
That could just as easily be a description of the power imbalance inherent in the police, as well as describing the party politics of government, or the tiny elite that owns and controls the mainstream news, or dominant corporations that are destroying the planet etc.
And as for Josh’s mention of the “thugs who have used his death as an excuse to riot, the scumbags who are so certain of the facts that they believe this entitles them to take the law into their own hands.”
We need to remind ourselves, that situations such as those that occurred on Friday 28th in the streets of Dalston, are all too often *necessary* in order to subsequently make the mainstream pay better attention to the fundamental issues that were previously being under-reported and poorly addressed.
As one of the speakers highlighted the next day outside Stoke Newington Police station, as he reeled off a long list of names of people who have died at the hands of the police in the UK … Most of us have not even heard of many of those names before.