The investigation was launched after a 15-year-old black girl suspected of having marijuana was strip searched at a London school in 2020 by two female police officers without another adult present. The girl, identified as “Child Q”, was menstruating and no drugs were found. A previous report said racism was a likely factor in the humiliating search.
‘A girl’s courage to speak up about a traumatic thing that happened to her’ led to the report which found ‘widespread disregard’ of safeguards and evidence of a ‘deeply concerning practice’, said de Souza.
The findings follow a scathing report last week which found the public had lost faith in London’s Metropolitan Police and the force was plagued by institutional racism, misogyny and homophobia and did not not enough to weed out bad officers. This report was commissioned after an officer raped and killed a young woman.
The new report says children as young as 8 were being searched in often inappropriate places, such as amusement parks or vehicles and sometimes even in public view. In some cases, at least one officer present was of a different gender than the child being searched.
More than a third of the 2,847 searches were for black children, making them more than six times more likely to be searched based on population figures, according to the report. White children were about half as likely to be frisked.
De Souza called the disparity “completely unacceptable.”
The Runnymede Trust, a racial equality think tank, said the findings were “even harder to absorb” than the Metropolitan Police report, which has been the subject of critical reports in the past. The trust has called for police to be removed from schools and revoked their authority to strip search children.
“Officers are often unable to justify the need for a strip search, or to account for the impact of protection on the child concerned,” the group said. “Quite the contrary. It also confirms that our policing crisis is not just confined to London, it is national.
De Souza said strip searches may be necessary but there must be “strong safeguards” to protect children.
Among her 17 recommendations, she called on the Home Office to review legislation and policy on searches and make specific changes to the police and criminal evidence codes.
A spokesman said the Home Office takes the protection of children very seriously.
“Strip search is one of the most intrusive powers available to the police,” the spokesperson said. “No one should be subjected to a strip search on the basis of their race or ethnic origin and safeguards exist to prevent this. »
De Souza also called on the National Police Chiefs Council to release a child search reform plan.
Chief Constable Craig Guildford said council welcomes the review and will review the findings.
