The other day I was looking at some of my recent bookmarks of articles/news that attracted my attention in the past, and I came across this event with English police (called Metropolitan Police). The story concerns an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Nottingham, who was arrested in 2013, pinned down, and strip-searched on the suspicion of obstructing and assaulting police after trying to hand a legal advice card to a 15-year-old caught in a stop-and-search sweep in Hackney. As she is cited in the article, she was treated like a terrorist, and in a cell, three female officers bound [her] by her hands and feet, pinned her to the floor and cut her clothes off with scissors. She described the ordeal (which left her with several visible injuries) as like a sexual assault. She was later cleared of the charge, and in the process, the Closed-Circuit TV (CCTV) footage from the ordeal proves how shockingly inappropriate the behavior of the police was.
She undertook a civil action suit against the force, and it was in that process that the CCTV footage showed up (much of the gross statements and the underpinning attitude of the officers is cited in the article below). This story was settled recently when “The Metropolitan police apologized and paid compensation to the academic for ‘sexist, derogatory and unacceptable language’ used by officers about her when she was strip-searched.”
My point today, however, is not about Police brutality nor misogyny in the force. What I find very shocking is that between 2013 and 2022, nine years went by for this matter to come to an end, and only because the ‘victim’ in this case was a professor and probably had ample capabilities, abilities, and network to fight it out and endure it all this time. Otherwise, this sh*t may have never hit the fan, for a lot of people will not have had the strength to go to the end.
Now, some of you may say, “look this is not good, but hey these kinds of things happen, and yes it takes long, but the society is not perfect, and the Police have probably learned their lesson, and have apologized.” Maybe, but the problem is that we have developed a zero-tolerance mentality in the society, where anything ‘unruly’ gets punished to the fullest, while major institutions that represent a state have such built-in behavior, and often get away with it (of course most officers are decent people, but if the sanction against those who abuse their powers does not come down, then respect and trust for the whole institution falls). Let’s not forget that “with great power comes great responsibility” and when that great power goes corrupt, our society’s foundations fall.
The Guardian article about the event
Paris, February 10, 2022
Zeejay