artdoc July=1992
01 January 1991
artdoc July=1992
CARF no 7, March/April 1992
[Campaign Against Racism and Fascism]
What do the names Mark Fletcher, Oliver Pryce and Melita
Crawford mean to you? Probably nothing. Yet these are the
names of three young black people who have recently died in
police, prison or hospital custody in suspicious
circumstances. Three more young lives have been taken -
unnecessarily - and we sit back and do nothing?
Colin Roach, Blair Peach, Clinton McCurbin became household
names. They were cases in which state repression was exposed
because there was a black press to investigate , local groups to
agitate, ask questions and support families to push the legal
system to its limits in the pursuit of justice. But we cannot let
any black death go unchallenged.
At every point in the custodial system black people are at risk
- of undue violence, of medical neglect, of dangerous drugs.
Vulnerable young black people who are mentally unstable are being
criminalised. Those who are recognised as mentally ill are being
brutalised. And all in a system where officers are a law unto
themselves, where they close ranks when a death occurs, where the
inquest cannot establish who was to blame for a death.
Mark Fletcher, a 21 -year-old African-Caribbean man, died on 8
February in Dudley Road Hospital, Birmingham. We do not know as
yet what he died of or what led him to be there. What we do know
is that he was taken into police custody, sectioned under the
Mental Health Act and transferred to All Saints Hospital. There
he allegedly collapsed after an injection of drugs was made into
his spine. But why was he taken into custody, what medical
treatment did he receive, what led to his collapse?
Oliver Pryce was asphyxiated by Middlesborough policemen in July
1990. CARF hoped that, with the inquest verdict of `unlawful
killing', returned in November 1991, his family would see justice
done. But, to date, three months after that inquest, the
coroner's office has still not forwarded the necessary papers to
the Director of Public Prosecutions. (It has also emerged that
the Police Complaints Authority, which has to investigate every
death in custody, was not brought in to investigate Oliver's
death until two weeks after it had occurred.) Meanwhile, the
family of Ian Gordon, who was shot dead by police in Telford, are
shocked to have his killing judged `lawful' at his inquest. They
are calling for a public inquiry.
The mother of 24-year-old Melita Crawford just wants the Home
Office to tell her how her daughter died whilst on remand at
Risley on a shop-lifting charge. Melita was found dead in her bed
by night patrol officers. It is thought that she died when a
packet of heroin that she had swallowed, burst. But why was
someone with a history of mental illness remanded in prison? Was
it recognised by the authorities that she was a drug-user? How
long did it take for the emergency bell to be answered by
night-staff whilst she was choking to death?
These deaths and their treatment by the authorities bear all the
hallmarks of previous black deaths. In the late 1980s, youth
worker Terence Brown and salesman Edwin Carr died suddenly in
hospital without explanation, Just like Mark Fletcher. Winston
Rose and Clinton McCurbin, like Oliver Pryce, were also
asphyxiated in police neck-holds. Will the Pryce family, like the
Rose family, have to wait ten years to get compensation? Jamie
Stewart died, like Melita, from a drug overdose which was either
ignored or misdiagnosed by police. And Delroy McKnight, like
Melita, might be alive today if the emergency bell at his prison
had been answered more promptly.
But for the occasional paragraph in the Voice and the campaigning
work of Inquest, such deaths would never be made known at all.
To prevent yet more similar deaths, there must be an unremitting
campaign around deaths in custody, the conditions under which
they occur, and get covered up.
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