Scrolling through the news on my break last week, I came across some footage that has stayed on my mind. It was of a bewildered young Black boy, who looked no older than 10 or 11, forced to lie face down by a Metropolitan Police officer who’d handcuffed him unnecessarily in East London.
The child was found to be entirely innocent but not before a trauma all too often dismissed by the advocates of stop and search targeting Black young men.
“What have I done? Why am I being arrested?” he pleaded with a voice yet to break, his hands locked behind his back and an officer crouched over him.
Witnesses claim the youngster had been among a group of white and Black kids play-fighting who’d dispersed at the sight of the officers approaching. The kind of harmless thing lots of mischievous young boys have done over the years.
“You’re not being arrested, you’re being detained,” said the officer who was handcuffing him.
So why shackle him? If the kid was simply being given “words of advice about his behaviour” as the Met Police claim, why embarrass and dehumanise him in order to do so?
Here’s where the term adultification bias comes into play. It describes the practice of harshly treating young boys and girls as though they are adults. A breach of child safeguarding and equalities legislation and guidance.
In policing, adultification disproportionately affects Black children who are perceived as less vulnerable, and more culpable, than their white peers.
It resurfaced a few years ago with the horrendous case of Child Q, the 15-year-old Black schoolgirl wrongfully and traumatically strip-searched while menstruating by Metropolitan Police officers at her school in East London.
Statistics reveal Black children are up to eight times more likely to be strip-searched, face higher rates of stop-and-search and experience inflated risk assessments in the justice system – where their chance of reoffending is weighed up. In other words, the data shows clearly that even as youngsters, Black people are seen by police as more of a threat.
Mercifully last week, a white man passing by stopped to intervene. Widely praised for his role in de-escalating the incident, which went viral on social media, the man warned the officer repeatedly: “Be gentle with him, he’s a child.”
Yet to be identified, the man calmed the distressed youngster down, comforted him and remained on the scene to, in effect, act in loco parentis.
A Met Police statement later claimed the officers on patrol had spotted “a group fighting” and that “from a distance it was not possible to tell how old they were”. The statement continued: “On noticing the police officers, the group ran from the area and dispersed, discarding items – including a balaclava – as they did so.
“Officers pursued two of the group on foot and detained one boy…[and] a stop and search was carried out.” Now, again. Why handcuff him? Why not just question him with the man who’d advocated for him as a witness?
“That decision [to stop and search] wasn’t based on race, [one] other boy just got away from a second officer,” said the statement. “The stop and search was done respectfully and officers fully explained why they had chased and stopped the boy.”
So, “we humiliated and dehumanised him unnecessarily – but we did it respectfully”. As the Met admit themselves: “No offences were identified and all involved were given words of advice around their behaviour.”
We obviously support the police position of not wanting the public intimidated. But there has to be a better way.
Because proponents of the handcuff-first-ask-questions-later approach couldn’t care less about the lasting effects on those Black boys and girls, more often than not, found innocent. And those children matter. Their self-esteem matters. Their mental health matters. Their dignity matters.