mercredi 9 juillet 2008

Black in a built up area

Your on the train listening to your ipod thinking about the evening ahead. Your station stops at the train you get off thinking about nothing in particular, then suddenly people are shouting and pointing, there are coppers everywhere but this time it's you whose the centre of all the attention. You're ordered to the floor, told to lie still with your arms spread whilst an armed officer yells at you and points his real horribly real pistol at your ear.

Then you wake up and it's all been a dream right, the innocent have nothing to fear. Alas, for Nzube Udezue, a 21-year-old recent graduate from Oxford University, this dream came thuddingly to life last weekend. It was all a case of mistaken identity but after the Stockwell De Menzes shooting (and the high number of people the police have shot since) these incidents should be taken seriously.

Not by the Independent Police Complaints Committee though. "In a statement, the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) said yesterday it deemed the actions of Dorset police "appropriate and proportionate to the circumstances".
Rather than mount a full investigation, the IPCC decided it would merely "supervise" Dorset police's internal inquiry. No other action would be taken and there had been no official complaint made, a spokesman said."

"appropriate and proportionate"- we have been warned, again.