Black women are almost three times more likely than white girls to be subjected to the most intrusive type of strip search by the Met police.
According to material received through freedom of information requests and analysed by Liberty Investigates, 110 female children and teenagers between 2017 and 2022 were subjected to strip searches in which their private parts were. L displayed.
Unusually, nearly half (47%) of those who underwent these strip searches were Black.
The research makes a distinction between less invasive strip searches and those that expose a person’s private regions.
45% of those subjected to both kinds of strip searches for young girls up to the age of 19 were Black.
36% of both kinds of strip searches among all women and girls involved Black people.
The results follow a report by the Children’s Commissioner that revealed Black youngsters had an 11-fold higher chance than their white counterparts of being chosen by officers for a strip search.
The police oversight organisation StopWatch’s youth voice lead and research coordinator, Shenna Darcheville, claimed that the disparity was caused by the “adultification” of young Black girls, which causes some officers to fail to recognise them as youngsters. Although many in our community just see it as plain old fashion racism.
Darcheville declared, “A full strip-search is just horrifying.”
“hands are in places they shouldn’t be and likely have never been before.
You’re terrified.
That has a really terrible effect.
Darcheville, who is leading a study project on stop and search, has heard from kids and teenagers who feel “violated” and “sexually abused” by strip searches.
“I know to the police it’s just a tool in their daily work that they utilise, but to the young people who they use it on, it has had a significant impact,” she continued.
75% of all the stop and searches Liberty Investigates examined resulted in no further action being taken, indicating that many of them did not aid in crime prevention or prosecution.
These findings come one year after Child Q, a Black 15-year-old teenager, was strip-searched by Met cops in 2020 after being falsely accused of possessing marijuana at her east London school.
In addition, the data examined by Liberty. Investigates shows that in 2021 and 2022, following the search of Child Q, the Met conducted 54 strip searches on female children and teenagers.
Children between the ages of 10 and 14 made up three of these.
The data, according to Diane Abbott, the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, is “really awful.”
Yet many of us who have been fighting for this for a while are not entirely surprised by them, she continued.
“While the government continues to deny this, there is convincing evidence of outright racism in these instances, especially because we are aware that in the majority of them, there is no proof at all of any criminal behaviour”.
Our girls need to stop being brutalised by the police it is as simple as that.
