State violence has no geographical stamp: both here and across the Atlantic in the US people are being brutalised to the point of death by oppressive policing, with black people facing the sharp end. 

The continuous sequence of protests, murders and state brutality with police being the driving factor is becoming an overwhelming agonising reality for the diaspora across generations in the western world.   

Too frequently when faced with stories about the murder of black people by the police in the United States, commentators in the UK attempt to shift our focus abroad instead of looking within. 

Just last year Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he’s “appalled” and “sickened” by the death of George Floyd stating, “racist violence has no place in our society”. However, this is a cynical attempt to avert our attention away from our struggles against racism, and the ruthless over policing here on our doorstep. 

The shared experience that we have with the Criminal Justice System globally is one of collective consciousness that brings us together under our joint experience of racial and systemic injustice

Data, research, and constant analysis from thinkers, academics and NGOs shows a clear pattern that policing is a problem for all diasporic citizens here and across the sea. 

Even though our police might not be as trigger-happy as cops in the States, one can only think that this might be due to their lack of access to them. 

Despite British police forces having less access to firearms than Americans, deaths due to fatal police shootings are still happening at an alarming rate. 

deadly facts

According to Inquest, an organisation supporting families of death in custody victims, from 1990 to 2021 there have been 76 fatal police shootings across England and Wales, compared to 936 in the United States in the last year alone.

Families are suddenly forced to mourn their loved one’s prematurely taken from them with the flick of a trigger. Take the bereaved family of 28-year-old Jermaine Baker for example, who was fatally shot dead in 2015 by a firearms officer in Wood Green, London. The Met officer was shockingly rewarded a firearms training role after. The same year of Jermaine’s death, 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio, was shot dead seconds after the police arrival while he was carrying a toy gun. The officer faced no criminal charges. 

The harm doesn’t stop at deaths. At the background of these tragic incidents is the general harassment of black people solely based on their skin. Research from New York University found that in a dataset of around 100 million traffic stops across the United States, black drivers are 20 percent more likely to be stopped than white drivers. In Britain, there are stark similarities. Researchers examined official stop and search data in the capital from July to September last year when 67,997 people and vehicles were stopped by officers, findings indicate that young black males in London were 19 times more likely to be stopped and searched. 

Even more nerve-wracking is that it’s hard to talk about the problems of policing without addressing the whole Criminal Justice System here and across the ocean. In the United States, young black men are about 50 percent more likely to be detained for pretrial then white defendants. Likewise, Britain suffers from the same sore reality as 74 percent of London children and young people on remand awaiting trial are black.  

Sentencing is also dripping in disparities across the board, as you can expect one out of every three black boys born today to be sentenced to prison in the US, compared to one out of 17 white boys. In the UK according to Ministry of Justice analysis young black people are 9 times more likely to be jailed than their white counterparts.

no justice

Many black people both abroad and in our local communities know the extent of over-policing, the criminal justice system and state violence very closely; we roam in communities where the sound of a police siren can ultimately result in misuse of power by state actors, leaving us with the constant threat of police acting in impunity. 

Even if we seek after accountability in this broken system, we’re likely to be left with little to no justice while having to pay the litigation fees and experience the emotional labour that comes with it. We live in communities where we’re overrepresented in prisons with many of us at least knowing someone who grew up with going to one.

The shared experience that we have with the Criminal Justice System globally is one of collective consciousness that brings us together under our joint experience of racial and systemic injustice, lack of accountability from the state and neglect. 

The hope that our common experience has produced is that from our trauma, pain, suffering, and joint rage comes solidarity, unity, drive and resilience. Only then will true justice and accountability be on the horizon. Only then will we build a world that nurtures us. Until then there is no justice, but just us.  

By Emmanuel Onapa