source: The HuffPost

first published: 29 April 2021

Image Credit: Wasi Daniju www.wasidaniju.com

1,784 people have died in England and Wales after contact with the police since 1990 – yet no officer has been held to account.

The CCTV footage shows a man face down on the floor of a police station, handcuffed and unresponsive, as he gasps for breath.

Officers are heard laughing and joking while making monkey and chimpanzee noises, apparently unmoved by the desperate plight of the man in front of them.

To this day, Christopher Alder’s sister cannot understand how Humberside Police stood by, ignoring her brother’s need for help and mocking him as he died. “They never even gave him a chance,” she says.

“They saw me and my family as just Black people that didn’t deserve any respect whatsoever. Christopher didn’t deserve any respect – he was Black, it didn’t matter. And, you know, the whole system has done it.”

Christopher, a father and former British Army paratrooper who had served in the Falklands, had been assaulted at a nightclub earlier that evening.

Janet has spent decades trying to piece together the events that followed, leaving her brother unconscious on the floor of the custody suite with his trousers around his knees.

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4WardEverUK’s Tippa Naphtali, said;

“This is a powerful and comprehensive piece on custody deaths/killings and the National Memorial Family Fund. We are very grateful to Emma Youle (Special correspondent, HuffPost UK) and the families that participated.”

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The poet reveals his own long history of being unjustly stopped by police and speaks about his cousin Mikey Powell’s death in custody.

It is striking how many different tales the poet Benjamin Zephaniah can tell about being stopped by police. Recounted in the deft storytelling voice that has won him a remarkable literary career, the famous writer goes over a succession of incidents ranging from the bizarre to the brutally cruel.

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