OVER 600 CHILDREN, MOSTLY BLACK BOYS, WERE STRIP SEARCHED BY BRITISH POLICE: REPORT

Mon 08 August 2022:

A study published on Monday, the Metropolitan Police (Met), Britain’s largest police force, strip-searched 650 minors, predominantly black males, between 2018 and 2020, Xinhua reported.

According to research published by Rachel de Souza, the children’s commissioner for England, 95 percent of the 650 minors aged 10 to 17 searched by Met officers were boys, and 58 percent of the boys were black.

According to the report, there was no appropriate adult present in 23% of the incidents.

The research was commissioned following the case of Child Q — a 15-year-old black girl who was strip-searched, without an adult in attendance, by female Met officers at her school in east London in 2020 despite them being aware she was menstruating. She was wrongly suspected of carrying cannabis.

The children’s commissioner said she was “shocked” by the figures after obtaining them from the Met.

“As was indicated in the Child Q case, the strip searching of children displays an extremely worrying ethnic disproportionality,” she said.

“Half of all strip searches of children resulted in no further action taken, which calls into question whether these intrusive and traumatising searches were necessary at all,” she added.

The commissioner said the figures suggested “systemic problems around child protection” in the Met. “I remain unconvinced that the Metropolitan Police is consistently considering children’s welfare and wellbeing.”

Iryna Pona, policy manager at The Children’s Society, a national children’s charity, told Xinhua: “We are horrified by the number of children subjected to these searches. We are also concerned by the over-representation of black children in these strip search figures, and race and adultification were identified as issues in the awful Child Q case.”

“Strip searches are intrusive and traumatic, and children are being completely failed if even basic safeguards are not in place,” Pona said.

In response to de Souza’s findings, the Met said it’s working “at pace” to ensure children subject to intrusive searches are dealt with “appropriately and respectfully.”

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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