A leading equality think-tank has called for police powers to conduct strip-searches on children be revoked after a damning report found widespread failures
Protests took place outside Stoke Newington Police station after Child Q’s treatment became public concluded that London’s police force is institutionally racist, misogynist and homophobic. The Met was overwhelmingly responsible for the largest number of strip-searches, conducting 891 or 31 per cent of the total – the next highest total of 202 searches was carried out by the Hertfordshire force.
The Children’s Society demanded that police forces and the Government urgently investigate why so many strip-searches of children are being carried out despite guidance stating that the procedure should only be used when absolutely necessary.Now aged 19 and classified as a victim of child criminal exploitation through the “county lines” drug-selling system, this young man was first strip-searched at the age of 13 after being arrested at his school.
He said: “I wasn’t given an opportunity to assure the police that I was not in a position of having drugs secreted. They told me to get naked. They told me to bend over. “[It] felt like they were humiliating me. So that was incredibly traumatic and from that really was just a terrible start of a relationship with the police because instantly I hated them. They humiliated me.”Most of the children strip-searched were boys, accounting for 95 per cent of incidents, with girls accounting for the remaining five per cent; 38 per cent of all searches were carried out on black children, with 42 per cent conducted on white minors and 14 per cent on Asians.
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