Child Q strip-search was gross misconduct, panel finds
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8zyjdj067o
Posted by Volotor
Child Q strip-search was gross misconduct, panel finds
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce8zyjdj067o
Posted by Volotor
16 Comments
Such a bizarre story.
The officers weren’t trained to do this – they were trained to seek a senior officer’s approval first. Bizarre they didn’t do that – and now they’ll be fired when a phone call would have protected everyone involved.
Happy to see this was the outcome. Besides the aggravating racial factors and safeguarding issues, there’s no fucking reason to strip search anybody for suspected possession of cannabis (or any drug for that matter), let alone a child.
Your house could get burgled and you could give the ring doorbell footage to the police and the most you’d get is a crime reference number for your insurance claim.
A young child comes to school, apparently smelling of weed, and everyone’s first thought was to call the police and then the police’s first thought was to strip search her…
Forget about social services, safeguarding or true pastoral care. Let’s traumatise a young girl trying to sit her exams instead of making sure that she isn’t living in some sort of drug den and being abused.
What an absolute fuck up.
Under age, strip searched by police, while on her period, *in school* because of accusations of some cannabis, makes absolutely zero sense.
Complete balls up from everyone, from the school to the bobbies. It’s pretty evident that that school worker who called the police and backtracked throughout the investigation put so much pressure on the bobbies stating she definitely had drugs, that the inexperienced officers ended up going as far as a strip search without knowing the requirements/processes involved to do so.
Failure from several parties
She is a young black girl who got reported for smell of cannabis and the police response is to strip her down and search.
I assure you a white girl would have not been subjected to the same level.
Not sufficient to call it gross misconduct, they committed a crime on duty, and a very serious one.
Was the headteacher fired as well for wasting police time?
Interesting quote from a senior met officer on the guardian article:
“Reacting to the panel’s findings, Met commander Kevin Southworth said what happened to Child Q “should never have happened and was truly regrettable”.
“While the officers involved did not act correctly, we acknowledge there were organisational failings. Training to our officers around strip-search and the type of search carried out on Child Q was inadequate, and our oversight of the power was also severely lacking,” he added.
“This left officers, often young in service or junior in rank, making difficult decisions in complex situations with little information, support or clear resources to help their decision-making.”
Kind of weird how they didn’t find adultification in this case when it’s been the centre of the discussion for the last five years.
Officers should be sacked, charges brought, added to the sex offenders register for life, and named and shamed in the papers as beasts. They have essentially sexually assaulted a child, this isn’t part of their remit and police who take advantage of their position are no better than the rapist who murdered that poor woman a few years back.
Public trust in the police is at an all time low, they are not above the law and should be treated like any other person in a position of authority who exploits that position of power for their own ends.
Good, took too long but glad people are finally being punished for this!
I’ll be in the minority here, but if a child turns up to school stinking of cannabis, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to call the police and for the police to search the individual if they suspect that they may have the drugs on them.
The age, gender and race of the individual are not relevant here.
If the child explains that their parents smoke it, fair play. Put a pin in it and pay the parents a visit.
Obviously. Now make sure they are actually sacked. And this really shouldn’t have taken this long to get to the point of the disciplinary hearing.
Gross misconduct – gonna fire them 2 coppers then for this disgusting abuse?
No of course not, they’ll probably get promoted and a raise
Poor child.
Those officers should be going to prison, and the teachers should have protected the child. If police said they were going to strip search and examine a child I was responsible for, they’d have to get through me first to do it.