Amid newly published research on discriminatory police behaviour, ongoing enquiries into the police related deaths of Mohamud Hassan and Mouayed Bashir, and several social media posts highlighting racist police behaviour to multiple male minors in Cardiff, more questions have been raised about the future and present position of Welsh police. This article includes mention of police brutality, police-related deaths.
By Aara Syed
“From a personal point of view I’ll always be traumatised because of how much I witnessed from violent behaviour of police officers.”
This is the voice of Berihun*, a young Yemeni Ethiopian who shared his thoughts on growing up in his area of Newport, and the racist harassment he himself, as well as those around him, have faced at the hands of the police.
“I feel a fear for my life especially after what happened to Mouayed because I know it could be all sunshine and rainbows until getting stopped by police for something I haven’t done or have no clue about.”
Berihun is referring to Mouayed Bashir, the 29-year old Black man from Newport who died last year following restraint by Gwent police.
Berihun says that even though police harassment can have an effect on his physical health, “what’s worse is that it definitely has an effect on my mental health.”
Young people
Berihun’s experience is not isolated. Over the past two weeks, several social media posts, including videos documenting the racist harassment of Black males by Welsh police have hit digital screens, prompting condemnation of the police by members of the public on social media.
Two separate social media posts reference the police targeting teenagers of colour in South Wales, one of whom was Black the other, Asian.
One of these two videos that has recently surfaced is of a Black teenage boy, a young victim of police racial discrimination in Cardiff city centre.
A Twitter user has also posted a thread about seeing a young Asian kid getting handcuffed by police on Albany Road, Cardiff, despite his pleas that he had done nothing.
They posted that they asked the police what they were doing, with the police getting seemingly irritated at their questions.
According to this thread, the police said that the kid ‘met the description of the person they were looking for’ to which the Twitter user replied: ‘What BAME young kids?’. The young Asian boy was then said to have been uncuffed.
The second of the two videos set in the Welsh capital is a TikTok showing a Black male victim of assault being put in handcuffs, with himself as well as witnesses telling the police that he was an individual who was attacked.
Patterns of police behaviour
Hussein Said, a member of Black Lives Matter (BLM) Cardiff & Vale commented on these instances of police racism: “In a way we can almost exceptionalise these things and I think its really important that we understand that this is just the bread & butter of policing, stop & searching Black & brown people.”
“Both of them [the cases put on social media] were very similar in the sense that of course its stop & search, but – in both respects the police said that it was because of suspicion, like nothing else, just a suspicion and in terms of the brown boy, they were looking for someone, who was also brown, in terms of the Black boy they were looking for someone who was also Black.”
Hussein continues:
“Its [the recent events posted on social media] incredibly disheartening, but its a function of the police – and I think we need to be careful not to – make it seem like that just happened [in isolation] because y’know we caught it on camera, these things happen constantly.”
Berihun details how racial profiling by the police is constantly ignored: “The numbers and stats are there for everyone to see,” he says.
“But everyone wants to turn a blind eye to it that Black people are more likely to get stopped than white people by police officers. It’s really sad.”
New research
Recent data sets released by Cardiff University Governance Centre, highlight racism in the Welsh police with regard to stop & search and police brutality.
Figures on Welsh police’s use of force against Black & Asian people were revealed for the first time by voice.wales last week.
The figures showed that Black people were subject to nearly 8% of the total instances for Welsh police use of force involving a firearm, despite Black people only numbering 0.6% of the total population of Wales.
Asian people were also disproportionately threatened with firearms by Welsh cops, (but to a lesser extent) with guns being used against people of Asian descent for 5.1% of all instances. Asian people account for only 1.8% of the Welsh population.
And on 8 March, at First Minister’s Questions in the Senedd, new stop & search data in Wales for 2020/21 was revealed.
According to this data, in 2020/21 8 out of every 1,000 White people living in Wales were stopped and searched. This compares to a rate of 56 per 1,000 Black people, 16 per 1,000 Asian people, and 28 per 1,000 people who identify as being from a “Mixed ethnic” background.
These findings show that there was a wider gap in the stop and search rate between White and Black people in Wales (8 to 56) than in England (7 to 51) in 2020/21.
Open cases involving racism in the Welsh police
Over the past 5 years there has been a spate of high-profile cases, haunted by forceful claims of institutional racism in Welsh police forces.
In February 2021, 29 year-old Black man, Mouayed Bashir was pronounced dead in hospital, following police restraint by Gwent police officers at his family home in Newport. It was only in February 2022, a year after Mouayed Bashir’s death when his family were able to see some of the police bodycam footage of his final moments.
A full inquest into his death is due to begin the week commencing 11 July of this year.
In January 2021, a 24 year-old Black man and expectant father, Mohamud Hassan, was pronounced dead by a paramedic at his home in Cardiff, just hours after being released without charge, and with bodily injuries and bruising, from Cardiff Bay Police Station.
In January 2022, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) told voice.wales that the body’s investigation into Mr Hassan’s death was “well advanced and nearing completion” and that a “substantial report” was being finalised.
Now, in April 2022, there does not seem to be an update on the IOPC’s investigation, despite Mohamud Hassan’s family and other members of the public urging the release of the relevant video footage.
An inquest into Mohamud’s death is set for this coming May.
In July 2019, 13 year-old Christopher Kapessa was pushed into the River Cynon, surrounded by a group of 14-16 of his white peers. Christopher, who could not swim, had previously suffered racist abuse at school.
South Wales Police ruled out foul play within a day of the tragedy, before public pressure led to them reopening the case. The force then found that Christopher was pushed in before he drowned. Despite finding sufficient evidence of manslaughter, the CPS decided it was not in the public interest to pursue the case.
Alina Joseph, Christopher Kapessa’s mum, appealed the CPS’ decision, but following a judicial review, in January 2022, the UK High Court upheld the CPS’ choice not to prosecute anyone over the death of Christopher Kapessa. A ruling which sparked public outrage.
In May 2019, then 20 year-old Siyanda Mngaza is said to have been racially abused and physically assaulted by adults much older than her on a camping trip near Mid Wales.
As Siyanda tried to find help, she was met by four Dyfed Powys Police officers who were already making their way to the scene. At this point, she was immediately handcuffed and taken away in a police car.
Siyanda, who is also disabled was charged with grievous bodily harm, and convicted and sentenced to four and a half years on 13 March 2020. According to a press release on the Free Siyanda website on the 23rd March 2021, the appeal judges at the Royal Courts of Justice declined Siyanda’s application for appeal. The release from last year states that Siyanda’s Family are ‘determined to fight on’.
Camilla Mngaza, Siyanda’s mum, made a powerful speech at this year’s March Against Racism: Cardiff, which took place on Sunday 20 March.
Detailing the violence that her daughter experienced on her camping trip back in May 2019, she said: “these are 40-year-old men, big 40 odd-year-old men that battered my child and stamped on her whole body and damaged the left side of her face”.
Overarching Issues
Hussein Said from BLM Cardiff & Vale illustrates that the actions of the police, including the recent cases of police racism documented on social media as well as the tragic recent police-related deaths of Mouayed Bashir and Mohamud Hassan, conform to the discriminatory state as well as the overarching capitalist system.
He states: ‘It’s the nature of which – the state & capitalism [and the legacy of colonialism] works – the way they criminalise Black people and then of course the way the system works by making people poor.”
“That’s the issue, the way they completely dehumanise Black & brown people, that they’re almost just people that are – going to be far more criminal, far more dangerous.”
He goes on to talk about the prison industrial complex and the continuation of white imperialism and colonialism through capitalism:
“Often we talk about the American system and how they incarcerate people- and so [that] being almost an anomaly there – but in reality – Wales has the highest incarceration rate – in Western Europe”
“The prison industrial system and the way that we [current society] cage people – I think our whole system in general, is obviously rooted in imperialism and colonialism and I don’t think those systems have ended, and that’s the main thing.”
He continues: “Capitalism is born off and breeds off, continues to survive off, that system of exploitation, that system of – exploiting Black and brown people, that is capitalism, we cannot have capitalism without racism, it’s fundamental.”
Berihun, who lives in Newport, adds that those at the top of the system are not the solution.
“The people in power are no use to this community… [they] are making the wrong investments,” he states.
“There’s not even a youth club you can go to on a daily in my area and I’m sure it’s like that everywhere.”
“The power in people is so much stronger than the people in power.”
* Name changed to protect his identity
Cover image: @ackley5 via unsplash
