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Vol. 75/No. 43      November 28, 2011

 
London protest demands
end to ‘deaths in custody’
 
BY TONY HUNT  
LONDON—Demanding “No more deaths in custody!” hundreds marched here October 29. The organizers, the United Families and Friends Campaign, have worked to expose the fact that 3,180 people have died in the United Kingdom since 1969 while in custody of police, or in prisons, psychiatric units, immigration jails, or while being deported. There were 225 such deaths reported last year.

“We have to take to the streets and stand with other families. The police need to be accountable,” stated Marcia Rigg, UFFC joint chair, at the rally close to Prime Minister David Cameron’s residence. Her brother Sean Rigg died in London in 2008 after being restrained by cops. Rigg said the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which investigates such deaths, was “biased towards the police.” Since 1969 only two officers have ever been convicted.

“The police think they can control everybody and act above the law,” Roy Senkali, a 16-year-old supermarket worker from London, told the Militant as the march assembled.

“We need to stand firm, be strong, the fight goes on,” said Patricia Coker at the rally. Her son Paul died in 2005.

Floyd Jarrett’s mother Cynthia was killed in the Tottenham neighborhood of London in 1985 when police burst into her house. The killing sparked an antipolice riot. “Twenty-six years later they kill Mark Duggan. You people will be brought to justice,” Jarrett said. Duggan was shot dead by cops in Tottenham in August, which also sparked protests and riots in the area.

A cousin of Jean Charles de Menezes, the young Brazilian worker who was shot on a train in July 2005, also spoke, as did the family of Jimmy Mubenga, who died in October 2010 while being deported to Angola. “The police are there to protect—not you and me—but the establishment,” said Rupert Sylvester, whose son Roger died in 1999.

Michelle Kelly from Birmingham came with the friends and family of Michael Powell, who died in 2003. “The police laid Mikey down in a van like a dog,” she told the Militant.

“We want some answers not just for my cousin but for all the others,” said Paulette Burrell-Ennever in an interview. She is the cousin of Kingsley Burrell, who died this past March in Birmingham. “We have always told our children if they are in trouble ‘go to the police,’” added Vicky Burrell, another cousin. “Now, I can’t trust them.”

A letter delivered to the prime minister charged the government with “a strategy of long drawn out investigations, which go on for years in order to wear families down. We have relentlessly used the judicial process system to no avail.” It contained a list of eight demands, including the “replacement of the IPCC … by a ‘truly’ independent body,” immediate suspension and interrogation of all cops and officials involved in a custody death, and “full disclosure of information to the families.”  
 
 
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