Sheku Bayoh: The Inquiry – Patterns and power

Episode nine: Patterns and power

“Families want the truth about what’s happened and they want people held to account. But most of all they want it to stop happening to somebody else. And one of the things that I don’t think is understood is the added trauma for families who’ve looked to these processes for change to then hear about another death in similar circumstances.”
Deborah Coles, Inquest

In episode nine of our Sheku Bayoh: The Inquiry podcast we are looking at the patterns that can be seen in deaths in custody, and the power dynamics at play.

In this hearing the Inquiry takes evidence from Marcia Rigg, whose brother Sean died in a police cell in 2008, after having a mental health crisis, as it looks to understand the role race may have played in Sheku Bayoh’s death. 

Sean was from Brixton – home to the 1981 riots in response to the policing of the Black community by the Metropolitan Police. Sheku was from the small former mining town of Kirkcaldy in Fife.

So why are there so many similarities – from the way officers involved were allowed to remain together before being questioned, to the ways the families were treated following the deaths of their loved ones.

As we hear from Deborah Coles of Inquest, families tell her charity repeatedly that they want to know the truth, and they want accountability – but more than that they want lessons to be learned to stop this happening to anyone else.

This episode also covers shocking allegations of racism within the police against Black and ethnic minority officers. It is alleged one Black probationer was forced to sit in the corner wearing a dunce cap as recently as 2023. In other cases, it is claimed, officers lied about their Black or ethnic minority colleagues to get them into trouble or prevent them getting a promotion.

I think racism is racism and it hasn’t changed. It has gone a bit covert, but people who have issues with people’s identity, they never change.

Sanda Deslandes-Clark, Semper Scotland

In 2023 Police Scotland’s outgoing chief constable Iain Livingstone gave a statement in which he claimed the force was institutionally racist and discriminatory. He gave evidence that while he stood by this statement he did not consider institutional racism to mean that overt racism was a reality in the force. He insisted “enormous progress” had been made.

Some giving evidence claim racism in the police has been left in the past. 

But Sanda Deslandes-Clark, former general secretary of Semper Scotland – Police Scotland’s staff association for Black and ethnic minority officers – says she has evidence that racism still exists in the force.

She told the inquiry: “I think racism is racism and it hasn’t changed. It has gone a bit covert, but people who have issues with people’s identity, they never change, and when the spotlight is taken away, when this Inquiry is gone, and the spotlight on race has changed, those people who have  issued will revert to their default position.”

Her view that those who are “not fit to be police officers in the 21st century” must be weeded out was backed by Dame Elish Angolini, who gave evidence on her past work on deaths in police custody.

Following the murder of Sarah Everard by Wayne Couzens, Dame Angiolini has been investigating the culture in the Metropolitan Police. She says there is an “urgent need” to rid the police of those abusing their power. 

“There are so many really good police officers, very good men and women out there and utterly dedicated to public safety,” she told the Inquiry. “ there really is an urgent need to rid policing of a significant number of people who are in there for their own purposes and not the public interest and who use the power that they have acquired to abuse members of the public and sometimes their own colleagues.”

For Marcia Rigg though, simply getting rid of the “bad apples” is not enough. She tells the Inquiry that reform is needed to ensure that the UK has “a police service not a police force”.

“For Sean or perhaps Sheku,” she says, “we can’t do anything now but we need to do it for Sheku’s sons and for Sean’s sons.“

Main image: Angela Catlin