You can't trust the police with your children's lives

My cousin Mikey Powell died because officers treated him as a racial sterotype, instead of a sick man in need of help
Benjamin Zephaniah

The Guardian

Auntie Claris has always been my favourite aunt. As a kid, I used to rush into her house in Birmingham and shout "Auntie Claris" and jump all over her. She was such a life-force. Most of my relatives were pretty straight, but Auntie Claris was so funky, she was a looker. If Mum was shouting at me, she'd say: "Leave him alone, Benjee's just havin' fun - you got to party some time."

Auntie Claris doesn't do any partying these days. It's so painful to see her now. Three years ago, in September 2003, her son and my cousin, Mikey Powell, suffered a mini-breakdown. It wasn't the first. Mikey was a dad, a son, a worker, and he was known and loved in the community. His friends called him Mikey Dread because he'd had great dreadlocks when he was younger. When Mikey got depressed he could be difficult, but he would never have hurt people or gone crazy with a gun, he wasn't that type. He hated guns, and was worried about his three kids growing up in an area that was gaining a reputation for its trigger-happy gangsters. That night in September 2003, his depression was particularly bad. It was around 11.30pm, and he was outside making a fuss. "Come on, Mikey, get in, calm down," Auntie Claris told him. But he wouldn't come in. She threatened to call the police, and still Mikey didn't come in. So she did.

Claris had always believed that the British bobby was the best in the world and if there was any trouble the police would sort it out. A couple of months earlier she had called the police when Mikey had thrown a wobbly and two officers came, calmed him down, left. This time it didn't work out like that. The police officers screamed at him to get down on the floor. Mikey took off his belt and hit the police car with it. The car drove at him, he was then sprayed with CS gas, hit with a baton and restrained on the ground until a police van arrived to take him to Thornhill police station. The next thing Auntie Claris heard was that he was dead.

Six officers were cleared of battery or of failing to treat Mikey with due care and attention. Of course, Mikey is by no means the first black person to have died in police custody. I can recite a terrible litany of such deaths, including Joy Gardner, Shiji Lapite, Brian Douglas and Wayne Douglas, all of whom died after being "restrained with the minimum necessary force". Unbelievably, one police chief suggested that there had been so many black deaths in custody because black people had weak necks. Over the past 30 years, more than 1,000 people have died in Britain in police custody. In that time, only two officers have been convicted as a result. Back in 1969 David Oluwale was found dead in the River Aire. The judge ordered the jury not to find two Leeds policemen guilty of manslaughter. In the end, both officers were found guilty of assault and of urinating on Oluwale while he slept in the doorway of a shop. The officers who killed Charles de Menezes on the tube are already back at work.
In my humble opinion Mikey was the victim of racial stereotyping. When the officers were called out to what is referred to as an "IC3", late at night in the rough Lozells area of Birmingham, they came as a police force and not as a police service. Because Auntie Claris had called them out, presumably they felt this gave them licence to rough him up. Mikey's death has convinced me that we need an emergency social services to deal with such situations, rather than an emergency police force. If social workers or medical staff who knew what to do in this situation had answered the call, Mikey would still be alive today.

There has been a huge change in my family since Mikey's death. Beforehand I was regarded as the political animal; now, everybody, from the kids to the grandparents, has become an activist. I'm writing away struggling to make deadlines while they are out on the front line campaigning for Mikey and other families who have suffered miscarriages of justice. As for Auntie Claris, it is hard to believe she is the same woman who used to greet me with such joy. She is broken. She is very angry with the police for betraying her trust. But worst of all she is angry with herself for having trusted them. We tell families now, if you have a problem with your son or daughter don't use the police force, try anybody else, ring us, ring a friend; don't ring the police because your daughter or son could end up dead.

· Benjamin Zephaniah is a poet, novelist and playwright; his books include Face and Gangsta Rap