UKC

https://inews.co.uk/news/child-q-met-police-strip-search-children-majority-...

Unfortunately, the black girl known as Child Q who has gone from being outgoing and happy to being withdrawn and self harming after being strip searched by the MET police, won't be included in these figures due to not having been under arrest at the time.

How many more Child Q's may there be, and why...?

It sounds horrendous and the school have some serious questions to answer as well as the police. It would be surprising if the girl involved want seriously adversely affected by the search as described.

There are about 500 secondary schools in London the article suggests that on average there is three searches per school per year. That is more than my experience over 25 years, but in Cumbria, I'd guess about 20 searches, although not in the  invasive nature of this one and always with a parent/guardian consent/presence . The one implication I would question from the article  is the racial one. About 25% of kids in London secondary schools are white, so 75% of searches being conducted on kids from ethnic minorities doesn't suggest any racial bias to me 

You just have to read the news on a regular basis and you'll see yet another case of abusive behaviour by the Police.  It's verging on the norm. Plenty of apologists for them to excuse their behaviour.

Yes, just some more typical racist police.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-60867784

A high proportion of the disadvantaged in our society are non white. There are not many non white heads of large companies either. 

The police may be at fault but these faults run all through our society. It is our fault. yours and mine.

I've certainly benefitted from being white, as far as not having to deal with racism goes, but regarding being 'at fault', I'm not sure what else I can do other than be aware enough to notice if (when) I make any assumptions to do with race, or subsections of different communities, and make sure I don't continue to. Other than working towards an environment which is more open/opportunity rich for people different to myself, of course, in whatever way presents itself.

I'm certainly biased but I'd say in many aspects education is starting to level the playing field. Non white students make more progress, get better grades and a higher proportion now get a degree. I'll be the first to admit that teachers can't take all the credit for this and found this paper interesting last week.

https://bmcpsychology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40359-022-00773-0

There are still issues, like the exclusion rates of travellers and black caribbean boys.

IMO the progress/attainment/mobility of disadvantaged students are a far bigger problem. How many disadvantaged students are now heads of large companies? On that I agree with you it is all our fault. I'm not really bothered about the ethnic make up of the population, but we need to have far fewer disadvantaged kids. 

Are you sure about those figures? I looked here: https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/percentage-pupils-ethnic-group-borough

This suggests an average of 40% of pupils are white (36% inner London, 44% outer London, 2019 figures). Are you sure you’re not just using the figures for White British? There are a lot of other types of white people here.

We already know that black people get stopped and searched more often than white people. So if the rates of strip searches are in proportion as you’re suggesting, then the Met have to be turning far more searches into strip searches for white kids as opposed to black ones. Is that plausible given that the safeguarding report into Child Q suggests that race was a factor?

Of course you’re making the assumption that drug use rates are the same across all racial groups. Conflicting data on this but we do know that those rates vary with ethnicity:

https://www.ukdpc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Policy%20report%20-%20Drugs%20a...

What's your point?  Police doing their job on one occasion doesn't say anything about wider racism.

I see now Dick is getting £500,000 for resigning.  Nice work if you can get it.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/mar/27/goverment-to-review-how-cre...

Yes, you are correct. 

Again I'm guilty of only having experience of three London schools where there weren't many. Also from a education point of view there would be concerns raised if there were significant differences in outcomes for white British and white other, but I accept this isn't the point in this context. 

In terms of police strip searches I think there is a problem, but it isn't the x10 that I've seen reported elsewhere. When you look at the figures here there appears to be two to three times as likely?  Is that any different to being disadvantaged or male? On a personal level I've been responsible for a massively disproportionate number of permanent exclusions for traveller kids (I'd guess about 5% of kids I've been responsible for were travellers and I know that 3 of the 4 PEX's were) T he national figures are better, but not much. I'd claim I wasn't biased against them and judged the process purely in the merits of the cases. The data doesn't support my view, hopefully my successors will do better. 

No one is saying the police don’t occasionally arrest people or that they are all bad but trying to pretend that the problem with the Met is all down to press/social media agendas is ridiculous when you get reports like this:

https://www.itv.com/news/london/2022-03-22/met-police-slammed-over-handling...

https://inews.co.uk/news/daniel-morgan-murder-met-polices-attitude-to-tackl...
 

Just for factual accuracy... 37% of kids at London secondary schools are white not 25% as you quoted (source: www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-45576261.amp). Although yes most likely the majority of searches would be the 63% of the kids who are pigeon-holed as non white, just by numbers 

Yes as Sean correctly pointed out I'd remembered the White British figure and not checked it, apologies 

I'd also like to see the figures by borough. Are they taking place in Richmond where 70% of the kids are white or Tower Hamlets where 11% are, before drawing any firm conclusions ? I'm guessing that disadvantage is at least as much a factor as race 

That’s  in addition to her previous Assistant Commissioner pension, for  slightly smaller remuneration, to be followed by her state pension in a couple of years.

No problem with her getting agreed salary pension etc. It is the payoff for failing and resigning that is the problem. 

Oh statistics, thou art a cruel mistress....

The thing is, most children in London are not white. So if you picked a random selection of them to be searched, it's entirely predictable that most of the ones you searched would not be white.

You are using this title to push a narrative of racism in the met police. Now I'm sure there are racists in the police (as there are in any large group) and stats are a great way to _show_ whether that racism might be widespread or not, but surely there is another one you could use to make your point that stands up to 20 seconds of scrutiny.

As far as the incident is concerned, I don't know anything about the procedures for strip-searching school children (and nor do I want to) so I'm more than happy to take it as red that the officers acted unprofessionally when experts say they did. An investigation needs to be done and those involved punished in accordance with its findings.

She is only taking what was offered and agreed to her, irrespective of the end result, take a look at individuals in other services and industries who get the same benefits dispute poor outcomes 

Considering the assistant commissioner of the Met has accepted the inquiry finding of the inappropriate adultification of Black Children and also that she takes very seriously the likelihood that racism was likely to have been part of how child Q was treated, it's not really a stretch to see a "narrative of racism" here!

All fair points.

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5802/cmselect/cmeduc/85/8502.htm

Yes I agree. Clearly no need for taser or firearms, as arresting a  terrorist murderer armed with a knife is now classed as just "doing their job". Great budgetary saving I guess 

How very dare she resign and collect the pension she's paid for.

You are aware the article you are linking to is flagging up the fact that the way she lost her job may well be unlawful?

Perhaps the police should start doing drugs searches on the kids attending Eton. That would soon get mummy and daddy on the phone to the Chief Constable.

Hmmm.  The statistic is this: 60% children are from ethnically diverse backgrounds yet they account for 75% of strip searches. 1 second of scrutiny needed to go ‘this don’t look right.’  Given the links between structural inequalities/poverty/drug usage/ethnicity then this disproportionality may be expected, or it could be racial bias or both  or something else.  

Not sure how many would bother to bothered. More like they would arrange for them to become editor of an influential publication, then MP and now in the House of Lords. A expulsion for being found in possesion of drugs doesn't seem to be a major problem for old Etonians like Zac Goldsmith.

On a slightly more serious note most of the private school expulsions I'm aware of are drugs related, the parental complaints are not about how the drugs were discovered, but why it is a big deal at all. 

I sort of agree, although I have some serious and too specific to post on forums concerns about her suitability for her role/former role.

However it should be remembered that senior police need to be paid well otherwise good ones will just leave to be some non executive director nonsense somewhere, or worse... be easily corruptible (in case we forget the 1970s and 1980s!). So paying them very well for their service is a net benefit to the public. Picking at her salary/pension/retirement package diverts the arguments from more serious things that could be discussed

You must be absolutely knackered from constantly defending the Met on here, so I can't really blame you for how lame this is, but really?  How on earth is this relevant?

I mean, yes, obviously it's good work, but so what?  This is like responding to allegations that your dog bit somebody by showing everybody photos of your other dog not biting somebody else.

Well, I suppose you could put it in to the context of the post I was actually replying to:

"> You just have to read the news on a regular basis and you'll see yet another case of abusive behaviour by the Police. It's verging on the norm. Plenty of apologists for them to excuse their behaviour."

It's more a case of responding to a claim that all dogs bite people and moreover biting people is all that dogs do,  by demonstrating that no, they don't.

Fair point, well made.  In that case I accept your argument and would certainly have to agree that at the very worst the Met Police only behave like corrupt abusive racist thugs some of the time.

The is certainly logic to this, and it may well have that effect in the  "real" world. I'm not sure it applies so much in the public sector. Again with the caveat that my experience is in education, not policing, I'd say in terms of corruption the reverse is true. Most Multi Academy Trust CEO's who have been found guilty of financial corruption were over paid given the size of their trust. I've a couple of ex colleagues who are now MAT CEO's they really aren't motivated by financial reward and I'd be concerned if they were.

I'd argue that with this issue, they really need to look at the ethnic make up of the force. The teaching workforce in North Cumbria isn't particularly diverse, but importantly it is more diverse than the community it is serving. We wouldn't be having this discussion about the intial statistics if the Met was as ethnically diverse as the community it was serving. 

Good luck with that, given the area the Met serves is just about as diverse anywhere on the planet !

That's a totally unfair take on what Rob said. No one expects identical profiles but although things are improving, it's acknowledged there is a long way to go.

https://www.london.gov.uk/questions/2020/2130#:~:text=Recent%20figures%20on....

That these police arrested a man competently without being racist is not really relevant. Clearly there is an institutional problem as is seen by numerous reports, which have been accepted by the police!

This is isn't some sort of anarchist smear campaign. Official inquiries by respected authorities have shown that this is clearly a big problem. And the incident mentioned in the OP is shocking and deeply troubling and ties into that, obviously. 

Shouldn't the kids currently at school in London make up the majority of the force in the future? The fact that it seems so unlikely/challenging is, to me, a stronger indicator of the possibility of institutional racism that the statistics at the start of the thread. Do you think the same about the teaching/health professions in London not being able to reflect the community they serve.

Edit Offwidth's link and a quick Google suggest that the teaching profession in London 27% already does in terms of the whole community 30% its just a long way behind the kids they are teaching 60+% The Met might be improving but at 10% are lagging well behind 

The problem with framing it as an institutional problem is that it's an amorphous pretty difficult to solve problem - because when you probe the individual scenarios the racism element becomes really hard to pin down, and thus address.

Take Child Q. Unacceptable strip searching of a kid at school. The evidence of racism? The mum and aunt thought it was racist, based on their belief - as they weren't there. The report writer thought it might be racist looking at wider research. Also thought it was "adultification"  - but we aren't seeing much press on that for some reason.

Did the cops (and the teachers) just think "oh it's just a black kid, must be drugs?". I don't know. I do know that's a pretty easy trope to fall back on: "If the police do something wrong, it's because they are racist".  I do know that the teachers had previously had a problem with this girl and suspected cannabis usage - denied by her, explained by her mother and excluded from consideration by the report as some sort of irrelevant victim blaming.

Believe me, we make enough mistakes and cock-ups without any racial element at all.

Is the problem "racist searching of children" or is the problem "searching of children" - because the focus now is on racist police, rather than perhaps addressing the issues with PACE in this case - if a supervisor had been informed then potentially this would have been a wholly legal search (notwithstanding the disagreement between teachers and police regarding acting as an appropriate adult).

Do we know the ethnicity of the officers involved - including the two female officers that conducted the search? Is that relevant? It might be to allegations of racism, it wouldn't be to the accusation if inappropriate searching. 

Perhaps we could better focus on training of police as to how they could have better handled this matter - it still isn't entirely clear to me (even after reading the report) exactly what the school wanted the police to actually do.

I think part of this is indicative of the mission creep that austerity has made worse - where the police have become the de facto "on call" agency for all state responsibilities around pretty much any safeguarding, concern for welfare, mental health, and other issues.

The reality is that the police are here to focus on crime - and we may see a push back towards that, with the appointment of someone who appears to be a much more "back to basics" HMIC who actually has some experience of policing.

This is coupled with the continued erosion of pay and conditions such that we aren't going to replace those leaving, let alone uplift in the numbers that have been rashly promised by government.  If you've got less cops, they have to focus on policing, not everything else.

If you call the police the expectation might be that they arrive to deal with criminality.

(That turned in to a bit of a ramble, I'd better do some work.

Just for clarity, as I know I will be accused of it regardless. Strip searching a kid under these circs in a school - unacceptable. )

I can see your point but also... it is institutional, in the sense that it is (apparently) a systemic and consistent issue. Is it any surprise they thought it was racist? Have the Met earned the benefit of the doubt? Is there trust and a consent to being policed in these communities? I think the answers are complex but at least it would appear the answer is often no.

Yes individual context needs to be applied but there also needs to be openness to acceptance of wider issues. Which senior officers have agreed with. And crikey its not like the mets rep is in good shape.

I'm not saying the diversity isn't something to aspire to, just that its not likely to be attainable - at least not any time soon.

Turned into the kind of well considered, insightful post that's the reason I'm glad you do still post on here.  It's in a completely different class to your comments upthread and you make some excellent points.

Cool.  I'm glad you did clarify, because I don't think it was clear that that is your view.  But it is now.

I was sure I'd commented and included a link to the actual report for info. Maybe I deleted it. It can be found here:

https://chscp.org.uk/case-reviews/

Not sure why? I can see why, in a community like London it will lag behind, due to there being more diversity amongst younger people. If teachers are pretty representative, why can't the police be? There is some concern over a lack of black headteachers currently, but given the make up of younger members of the profession in London I'm hopeful this will become less of a concern over time.

I wouldn't have got very far in education by telling kids this is an aspirational target, but you have no chance of meeting it. Even less so if the kids at the school down the road were. Perhaps it is different for adults in the real world 

On this we can agree, the Met seems to be at least 20 years behind other public sector professions, it probably going to take decades rather than years. Although perhaps the bosses at P&O have some ideas on how the process could be accelerated. I am joking, but being taken over by United Learning has a massive impact on the nature of our workforce