MP demands answers over Stockwell schoolgirl arrest

Police defend sending 14 vans and cars to deal with kids saying PC was afraid of being attacked

QUESTIONS: Labour MP Florence Eshalomi

A LABOUR MP has demanded answers after a schoolgirl was subjected to a “traumatic” arrest which sparked uproar in the local community.

Florence Eshalomi, MP for Vauxhall, spoke out about the treatment of the 16-year-old Muslim girl after she was forcibly handcuffed, as her mates pleaded with the school patrol officer to let her go.

14 police vans and cars, including an armed response unit, arrived on the scene in Stockwell after the child was cuffed and ‘bundled’ into a vacant shop when PC Bamber spotted a group of school children messing with the shop shutter. The girl was accused of burglary but let go when no evidence of a crime was found.

Eshalomi told The Voice: “I have raised the issue of stop and search on a number of occasions both with the local police in Lambeth and with Government Ministers in Parliament.

“My young constituent has gone through something traumatic and so have her parents – its vital that going forward, their questions about the decisions made that day in relation to this particular stop and search are answered.”

Eshalomi is speaking at a public meeting tomorrow evening in Stockwell, alongside the parents of the child (see flyer below). Lambeth Police have been invited.

Pippa Wilson from Lambeth Police told The Voice that many officers attended “because [PC Bamber] pressed his emergency button and requested more units for fear of being assaulted.”

Video footage of the incident released on social media shows around 40 mostly black school children at the scene.

On Saturday, the mother and father of the child told The Voice that their daughter had been left traumatised by the experience and was taken to the hospital with bruising on her wrists caused by the handcuffs.

Police denied that the girls’ hijab was pulled off during the incident, saying it was “already partially removed before the incident began.”

Theresa Williams, head of school at Platanos College, where the girl attended, told The Voice that PC Bamber called the school when the incident began after the school day had ended, who alerted the pastoral manager who attended the scene.

Other school staff helped to disperse the pupils and collect witness information, including a passing councillor and a civil servant. The school kept in contact with the child’s mother, who wanted to have a restorative justice meeting with PC Bamber.

That meeting did not take place because the officer went off sick. Campaigner Lee Jasper, who is supporting the family, says the parents now want an IOPC (Independent Office of Police Conduct) investigation.

Read Lee Jasper’s article here

Comments Form

2 Comments

  1. | Chaka Artwell

    If the English Police Constabularies and the Metropolitan Police Constables, with their C. S. Spray; quick release Batons, 50,000 volts Tasers, and shackles cannot cope with unarmed children; without the support of 14 Police vans and accompanying Police Constable support: in an English nation that overwhelmingly accepts the principle of Policing by consent.
    Then clearly for Her Majesty’s African-heritage Subjects, calling the Police will be the equivalent of being publicly assaulted by a member of the public; and then being assaulted by the heavily armed Police: whose deep psychological fear of African-skin men; women and youth cause the Police Constable to irrationally shackle and assault African-heritage people, whilst treating them as the villain and the perpetrator of a crime, insteads of victims.
    How have the Police Constabularies lost the basic skills of Policing England’s largely unarmed Subjects?
    Why are 14 Police vans required for an incident involving a female pupil aged 14?
    These questions should be asked by Her Majesty’s Home Affairs Select Committee.

    Reply

  2. | Winston Brooks

    They probably learning from african police how to police africans

    Reply

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