Child Q: Protestors hit streets over police strip-search of Black teenage girl at school

“It is one of the worst things that could happen,” said Hackney resident Althea who was one of hundreds who took to the streets to protest about the police strip-search of a Black 15-year-old girl at her school.

“I feel distraught for the young girl,” she said.

People gathered in Stoke Newington High Street outside the police station to express their anger and disgust at what happened to the girl, who is known as Child Q to protect her identity.

One mother, who joined the protest with her daughters, said: “It hits you emotionally, I have girls of a similar age.

“To be stripped naked at school – it’s out of order, it’s disgraceful.”

She said her daughters have reported since primary school how Black children are treated differently: “This has been happening for too long in schools.”

Her 13-year-old said: “I’m disappointed,  because it should have changed by now.”

Hackney resident TV presenter Andi Oliver, said: “We’ve been having this conversation for too long.”

She added that systematic racism in the police needs to end.

“Something is very wrong if this is happening to a school child. I’m disgusted.

“What’s going to happen to that girl and her friends on the streets if anything happened to them? Are they going to go to the police?”

Ms Oliver said: “That child is suffering from PTSD. She is going about her business, and they can’t ever give that back to her. I think they should be ashamed.”

Ngozi Fulani of Sistah Space told the crowd Child Q’s school should have prevented the strip-search.

“We are looking for justice,” she said and called for charges to be brought.

Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP Diane Abbott said Stoke Newington police station had a reputation “for violence and brutality”, including the death of Colin Roach of a gunshot wound  in the entrance of the police  station in 1983.

She said: “I thought we had put the worst of that behind us. But here were are confronted with brutality by Hackney police officers all over again.”

She said 25 children were strip-searched in the last year of whom only two were white.

“The reason that the police were able to do that to that child is that they had done it before and nothing happened to them. This time I hope it’s going to be different.”

She questioned why Child Q’s unnamed school would call the police if they thought they smelt cannabis on a child.

She  said: “Schools are supposed to be places of safety. Who wants to send their child to school and know that it will call the police on them like that? I think the school has questions to answer.”