This is just shocking (trigger warning -racism)

[iloverock]

www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/department-for-education-metropolitan-police-services-scotland-yard-hackney-b988292.html

Please read the formal review.

Essentially the teaching staff called the police because a black 15 year old girl smelt of cannabis. She was taken to a room and strip searched. She was on her period. Her mother wasn't notified. She was not given the opportunity for an appropriate adult to be present.

This makes horrific reading.
As a teacher, I'm appalled.
Where the hell where her teachers? Where on earth was pupil welfare? Where was the safeguarding officer?

The PO's who ordered the strip searched should lose their jobs. Horrific.

Awful but doesn't surprise me much, law enforcement and racism is all too common.
My niece's friends were held by emigration overnight after travelling to the UK by boat.
Their parents are Nigerian in Ireland most of their life, they were held until the officers made contact with the Irish Embassy.
The police forcefully dragged their weaves off before locking them in separate cells.
No apologies in the morning once the Embassy confirmed their details.

Maybe they won’t do gofundme etc because it could identify the child? I hope someone/some company/tv show/mumsnet/legal team ?? can facilitate a crowd funder so that the family can remain private and the girl remain anonymous.

State sanctioned child sexual abuse. Where was the school’s DSL? Where was Ofsted? Why hasn’t the school been closed down due to such a monumental safeguarding failure? Why haven’t the police officers involved been named and shamed? Fired?

If they wish

@oakleaffy

I was a white girl {Now a woman} and was homeless as a teenager. I can assure you police stripped searched me in a really humiliating way on a several occasions, simply as I was thin {hungry} and they assumed I must have been on some sort of drug.

Being taken to the police station {Vine Street, London} was awful.

Is there any ''Nice'' way to be strip searched?

I think not.

They didn't find anything.

As a girl, I felt powerless, I doi wonder if they did it to keep numbers of people they searched up?

They did seem to strip search a number of young women who were also homeless.

Police Women did the actual searching, but if one made a fuss, it was ''Do you want me to call the Sgt. in?''

As a teenager, with no idea, I just blindly complied.

Genuinely what are you trying to gain from posting your experiences other than minimising the racism that was involved in this case. Why would you want to minimise the racism?

@LakieLady

Wtf is it with the Met? Why can't they just behave appropriately?

This is a shocking way to treat a child.

The MET seems like the worst police force in the country. Everything I hear about what goes on there is truly shocking

She has been violated. It is truly shocking

I don't know if I misunderstood, but the BBC report seemed to indicate that the Met is taking no action against the officers involved. I hope the backlash will be strong enough to force the Met to do something, hopefully sacking the officers. They assaulted that child.

The Met is not fit for purpose, it is rotten and racist to the core.

When there is such a clear cut condemnation of the police officers and the teachers/staff at the school then it should be immediately the case that there will be sackings and an immediate OFSTED inspection on the grounds of child safety. But there won't be, will there? Just more trauma for this young girl and her family, as people minimise and brush it under the carpet. The police involved will be probably just be given a note on their record, and I can't see any of the teachers being officially sanctioned either. There will just be lots of waffling about procedures and blah blah blah, then hope that everyone forgets about it.

This is just so distressing. The poor girl was abused by the police, it was an outrage.

I don't think much of the school calling the police just because somebody thought the girl smelled of cannabis.

Young people should feel they can trust adults, especially those in charge. I say 'should', they often can't and this awful case illustrates that.

I can remember similar things happening when I was a teenager in the 1960s; I would have hoped society had moved on since then - obviously there is still a long way to go.

Surprisingly for the mail the comments are all of support, what I've seen anyway.
That poor girl and her family. They need to sue, I'm sure many people would help to fund it, knowing what the police use to deter people from doing so.

I think @EthelTheAardvark has nailed it, the police officers went against standard procedure, on the very shaky grounds that someone, a teacher, believed they smelt cannabis on the girl, ( post covid dysosmia, anyone ? ) remember they had already done a 'normal' search which produced no evidence of drug use or possession. Instead of contacting their superior officer for advice about how to procede ( who would have probably/hopefully have said 'are you having a laugh, the four of you get back out there' ), they decided to take the child into a room and strip search her.
When that highly degrading and intimate strip search also produced no evidence of drugs, the child was sent home without the school or the police officers informing the parents of what had happened ?

To put it into context, DS didn't do their Maths homework for two weeks and we got a phone call from his teacher !

This is sickening.

The Review is good. But I read through it looking for a question which I did not see asked or answered: why the hell would they make her remove her ST, spread her legs etc because of a report that she smelled of cannabis? I honestly have never heard of anyone carrying weed for immediate use in their vagina or rectum… drug mules with capsules or condoms of heroin or cocaine maybe, but not school children FFS.

She was sexually assaulted, IMO, and the TW could cover sexual assault of a child as well as racism.

I am sickened by all the abuse of police power reported in this thread, and outraged for all of it. It does matter that police abuse ANY woman like this. However The fact that police have abused their powers to strip search white women does not mean that racism was not at play in this case.

She was sexually assaulted, IMO, and the TW could cover sexual assault of a child as well as racism.

Yes absolutely. There was NOT legitimate reason for the action taken. They violated that young girl for no good reason.

From the review

Over the same period, 25 children under the age of 18 were subject of ‘further searches’. 19 were male and 18 were handcuffed during the process. The reasons for search primarily related to suspicions about drugs (20), followed by weapons (4) and stolen property (1). 22 (88%) of the searches were negative with an outcome of no further action recorded in 20 (80%) of the cases. In terms of ethnicity, (as per the codes used by the police), 15 (60%) of the children searched were Black, 2 were White, 6 Asian and 2 Arab or North
African.

“further search” means strop search

60% of those children under 18 who were strip searched by the police were black

8% only were white.

They sexually assaulted a child.

Jesus. The police are awful.

@Testingprof

There are no words to describe how cruel that sounded.

@Tortabella

Poor child. Devastating. She deserves more than an apology.

Literally every person involved who stood by and watched it happen should face consequences. That poor child, how will she ever trust anyone in authority again?

this was 2 years ago, they're only apologising now. Whats happened to that poor girl in this time?

[quote Katya213]@Testingprof

There are no words to describe how cruel that sounded.[/quote]
It wasn’t cruel. What happened to @oakleaffy was wrong but I’m highly suspicious of the posters who are clamouring to say they are white and have had similar happen to them especially in the face of posters claiming it didn’t happen or it’s not racist because it could have happened to a white girl.

Adultification is threaded all the way through this.

It is not that long ago that I was at school/college. Ethnic mix: predominantly white, British-Pakistani, British Asian. Yes, people were suspected to smoke cannabis behind the bike sheds and so on. No, the staff weren't happy about drug taking on the premises and suspensions happened.

But hell would have iced over before they called police in to do a strip search for suspected concealed cannabis on the day the student was taking an exam. It would have been put on the back burner to discuss the next day.

No-one cared about what this did to Q, or how this would disrupt her exam chances. She was seen as a grown up who could deal with it.

And for what. Because someone thought she smelled of cannabis. I spent my entire schooldays stinking of fag smoke. I've never smoked, and if anything, cannabis is far more pungent than tobacco. You only have to walk through an alleyway where someone has been smoking to get the smell in your hair.

“Testingprof

oakleaffy
I was a white girl {Now a woman} and was homeless as a teenager.
I can assure you police stripped searched me in a really humiliating way on a several occasions, simply as I was thin {hungry} and they assumed I must have been on some sort of drug.

Being taken to the police station {Vine Street, London} was awful.

Is there any ''Nice'' way to be strip searched?

I think not.

They didn't find anything.

As a girl, I felt powerless, I doi wonder if they did it to keep numbers of people they searched up?

They did seem to strip search a number of young women who were also homeless.

Police Women did the actual searching, but if one made a fuss, it was ''Do you want me to call the Sgt. in?''

As a teenager, with no idea, I just blindly complied.”

“Genuinely what are you trying to gain from posting your experiences other than minimising the racism that was involved in this case. Why would you want to minimise the racism?“

Maybe Testinptof posted her horrible experience of police the police strip searching her as a homeless teenager to show the widespread bullying by the police of anyone vulnerable they can lay their hands on.

Testinprof did not have a home to go back to. She evidently wasn’t in school either. She might have been living in hell at home before or she wouldn’t have been homeless at that young age. She too needed safeguarding not ‘legal’ assault.

This awful act on the young girl in the OP was racist. But the crime against her was not excluded to racism.

I meant oakleaffy did not have a home to go back to.