Remembrance & Memorials : Mikey Lloyd Powell

4WardEverUK • 3 September 2024

source: 4WardEverUK

published: 3 September 2024

Image Credit: Friends of Mikey Powell : www.mikeypowell-campaign.org.uk


From all of our hundreds of Remembrance Calendar entries, we particularly feature certain cases that were of notable historical significance.


Mikey Lloyd Powell


Mikey’s cousin and prominent activist and social justice campaigner, Tippa Naphtali, previously wrote the following moving article to commemorate the 15th anniversary of his 2003 custody death - it remains relevant today:


"It was a lazy Sunday morning of 7th September 2003 when I received the devastating news from my sister that my cousin, Michael Lloyd Powell (known as Mikey), had died during a violent restraint by West Midlands police officers. This news was to mark the start of a 15-year journey that would have a significant impact on my life to this day.


"Mikey was a hard-working and loving father of three boys, and was well-known and respected in the local community. He was experiencing a severe psychotic episode when police officers were called by my distraught aunt, Clarissa Powell.

The National Mikey Powell Memorial Family Fund was established in Mikey's memory to ensure that affected families or their campaigning groups across the United Kingdom can get access to small grants to provide practical domestic assistance, to further the work of their own campaigns or assist them in engaging in other local, regional or national campaigns, events and initiatives.

"After a brief verbal altercation, the attending officers drove a police car at Mikey knocking him down, then beat him with batons, CS gassed him, and violently restrained him. Knowing he was injured, they drove him to a police station not a hospital. He died of asphyxiation after been restrained face down on the floor of the police van."


When two worlds collide


"I had worked in the fields of mental health and police consultation in London for many years prior to my cousins’ death, and these collided tragically in September 2003.


"Such was the impact of his death, I made the decision to move back to my home town of Birmingham after 28 years living and working in London; so that I could be at the forefront of my family’s fight for justice, as well as to ensure changes were implemented in both policing and mental health practice. I was determined that Mikey’s life and death would be remembered with a lasting legacy."


Read the full article here >

share this article on social media

Mumia Abu-Jamal
by 4WardEverUK 26 April 2025
On March 26, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal permission to appeal a September 2024 denial of his latest petition to reverse his conviction.
John Charles de Menezes
by 4WardEverUK 26 April 2025
The mother of a man shot dead by police in a London Underground station after being mistaken for a terrorist has said “everyone should watch” a new dramatisation of her son’s killing.
Armed police officer
by 4WardEverUK 26 April 2025
New rules giving anonymity to firearms officers accused of murder put police above the scrutiny faced by the rest of the public, the head of the charity Inquest has warned.
Evidence police line
by 4WardEverUK 20 April 2025
A significant step by SA's legal system in confronting the atrocities of its past. A judge approved the trial of police officers for their involvement in the 1982 assassination of three activists.
Palestine protesters
by 4WardEverUK 20 April 2025
Protests in West Yorkshire and elsewhere have mobilised against the Teledyne arms factory. Palestine solidarity rallies and marches took place across Britain in a national day of action.
Police gun in holster
by 4WardEverUK 19 April 2025
South Carolina executed Mikal Mahdi by firing squad on 11 April. Mahdi had been convicted and sentenced for the 2004 killing of an off-duty law enforcement officer, and others followed.
More Articles