Police strip-searched a 15-year-old black girl at school. When will these abuses end?

The revelation that a black schoolgirl was strip-searched by police at school in Hackney, east London, after teachers claimed that they smelt marijuana on her, is shocking. But the details of the search, the indignities inflicted on a 15-year-old girl, are truly distasteful.

She was made to strip naked, to spread her legs, to use her hands to spread her buttock cheeks and then to cough. She was menstruating. According to family members, the police insisted that she take off the bloody pad and would not let her go to the toilet to clean up. Then they made her reuse the same pad.

No drugs were found, yet the rumour spread around the school that this perfectly innocent girl was a drug dealer. Her mother told the local child safeguarding review that the experience had left her daughter traumatised. Her aunt added: “I see the change from a happy-go-lucky girl to a timid recluse that hardly speaks to me.” She said the girl was now in therapy and that she self-harms.

It would be easy to dismiss the 2020 incident as an aberration, to believe that the police officers involved were the proverbial “bad apples”. After the damning review, the Met has voiced public contrition, calling the strip search “truly regrettable” and apologising “to the child concerned, her family and the wider community.”

But there is a deeper truth here: although senior Metropolitan police officers are better media trained than ever, the racism and misogyny that has always characterised and blighted the force is still very much present. Recent incidents make that clear.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/mar/16/police-strip-search-black-girl-school-east-london-racism-misogyny
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