Last Saturday marked the tenth anniversary of the death of Mikey Powell in Birmingham. I am sorry I was not able to get up to the community meeting and rally this weekend, however I am encouraged that people have not forgotten this tragedy.
I covered the death of Mikey Powell when I worked for black newspapers, including attending a march in Birmingham and covering the inquest in Leicester.
I was an appalling case which began with his family called the authorities for assistance when Mikey was having a mental illness episode and ended with Mikey being run down by a police car and CS-sprayed while handcuffed while already incapacitated on the ground before being asphyxiated with several officers pinning him down.
The decision of officers to accelerate a police car into a civilian in order to restrain him is unique, however all officers were acquitted of charges of misfeasance in public office, meaning the Powell family have received no justice.
On Saturday, ten years after his death, police “apologised” for pain and suffering caused, a classic case of too little, too late.
The BBC reported:
Mr Powell’s cousin, Birmingham poet Benjamin Zephaniah, said: “We have been asking questions for 10 years, protesting for 10 years, writing letters, and poems, and statements for 10 years, but most of all we have been collectively grieving for 10 years.
Mikey, 38, died in September 2003 after being struck by a police car and, according to witnesses, beaten with batons outside a family home in Lozells, Birmingham.
From Brian Douglas to Roger Sylvester to Mikey Powell to Christopher Alder to Sean Rigg, the list of cases where there are still many questions to answer is long and continues to grow.
It has been 42 years since the first, and last, conviction of police officers for any crime relating to the death of a black person in custody, when two officers were jailed for the hounding of David Oluwale leading to his death in 1969.
Since then over 100 black people have died in custody, yet there have only ever been two court cases – of which Powell is one – and no convictions.
It is inconceivable that in all these 100 deaths that no officer has committed any crime.
Until this changes no apology for “pain and suffering” will make anything better.
By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway
