Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside a Hackney police station to protest the strip search of a Black schoolgirl who was wrongly suspected of carrying drugs.
Crowds of people from across London gathered outside Stoke Newington Police Station on both Friday and Sunday afternoon, in solidarity with the 15-year-old child, following the publication of a Local Child Safeguarding Practice Review.
The report found that racism was a “likely factor” and concluded that the search of the child, known as Child Q, was “unjustified”.
Protestors called for police to be banned from schools, and demanded Black and ethnic minority children stop being criminalised for their race. They chanted: “No justice, no peace, no police.”
Placards included “How many letters come before Q?” and “Cops off my body”. Others listed the names of other Black women, who are believed to have been discriminately treated by the Met.
Sophia Purdy-Moore, a 26-year-old student who attended the protest on Friday, described feeling “heartbroken and disgusted” by the incident.
“This [incident] just reflects the routine harassment and injustices that Black and marginalised children face in the UK everyday, in their schools and in their communities
“We need to get police [sic] out of schools,” she said.
Speakers from a number of activist organisations addressed the demonstrators, including the National Education Union’s Black Educators Network and Sistah Space, which aims to increase safe spaces for Black women who are victims of domestic violence. The protest was organised by Hackney Cop Watch.
In a speech to the crowd, MP Diane Abbott, said: “We have had enough. The reason the police were able to do that to [Child Q] is because they have done it before, and nothing happened to them.”
“We have to draw a line and say [schools and the police] cannot treat our children like this.”
According to the report, 25 children were strip-searched in Hackney and Tower Hamlets in 2020. Only 2 of the 25 children searched were white, despite white residents making up 60% of the population in London.
Dalston Councillor Soraya Adejare, who attended the protest with her young daughter, argued that the criminalisation of Black children in Hackney “has gone on for too long”.
“This isn’t an isolated case,” she said. “There is this immediate perception of Black and minority people of being criminals or worthy of investigation.”
School children in Hackney have been staging peaceful protests at their schools since the publication of the report on 16 March 2022, and several students who claimed to go to Child Q’s school spoke to the crowd about how they feel unsafe at school.
In support of the protest, Phillip Glanville, Mayor of Hackney, said: “It was really important when we heard from young people at the start.”
“Young leaders and school children are here to give young people the voice…they want to see real change in our schools and in the police, and racism is at the heart of that challenge and change.
“When people sit around a table and see a Black person in front of them, they should see a young leader, not just a person needing to be managed.
The Mayor outlined Hackney Council’s anti-racism action plan and “No Need to Exclude” strategy, which argues that Black children are discriminately excluded from schools. However, he argued that “change hasn’t moved fast enough” and didn’t move fast enough for Child Q.
Glanville said he wants to see better collaboration between the council, the police and the community in future.
“I will continue to work with the police to keep people safe, but strategically at a senior level, we have to see that real commitment to change.
He added: “I’m here to say that I’m hearing [the community] and I want to be part of the change…I want to review what the council have done, I want to challenge the school, and I also want to challenge how we’re policed.
“Every single incident, we get warm words [from the police] that it will never happen again or it won’t happen today, and frankly, that is unacceptable.”
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