@Frosty
Okay so you have a good grasp of it then. Do you then understand how difficult it would be to charge a police officer after the majority of those situations with manslaughter or even murder. It’s not the thread for it and I don’t want to derail. But I dunno I see people do this a lot, post death in custody figures and then follow it with stuff like “officer not charged”. Without presenting the overall picture so that people can actually fully understand it.
Whilst I agree that this may not be the place to discuss this, and I am more than happy for us to engage in a genuine debate elsewhere (I am not interested in shouting you or anyone else down), I would like to say a couple of things in relation to this, as you raise good questions.
First, since the OP made the connection between BLM and America, the statistics in the UK show that it has been half a century since a police officer has even been charged with the death of a BAME person. The last case was David Oluwale -
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-47946556. This was also the first and only prosecution of the police for the death of a black person.
Now, US society is highly criticised for not prosecuting officers who shoot and kill African Americans. But the officers who killed George Floyd have been charged and will be put in trial.
I think that the fact that we have deaths in custody here, that we have cases like Mark Duggan and Darren Cumberbatch, and that we are worse than the USA is for holding police accountable for those types of cases is at least worthy of discussion.
Second, the IOPC is seen as not fit for purpose amongst many families whose loved ones have died in police custody:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...after-contact-with-police-still-await-justice
Less than 1 in 10 officers found guilty of gross misconduct are fired -
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...officers-fired-after-gross-misconduct-finding
The point I am getting at is I suspect there is a structural problem here. The CPS could bring charges against the police - the two stage test is no different for the police as for you and I. But there appears to be a combination of institutional inertia and a lack of wider understanding of the potential problem here. We are over twenty years since MacPherson's judgment of institutional racism on the Met and many issues appear endemic. 90% of young people on remand are BAME.
People of black, Asian and minority ethnicity (BAME) die disproportionately because of use of force or restraint by police (
https://www.inquest.org.uk/bame-deaths-in-police-custody).
The proportion of BAME deaths in custody where restraint is a feature is
over two time greater than it is in other deaths in custody.
The proportion of BAME deaths in custody where use of force is a feature is
over two times greater than it is in other deaths in custody.
The proportion of BAME deaths in custody where mental health-related issues are a feature is
nearly two times greater than it is in other deaths in custody.
In 2017 Dame Elish Angiolini QC published her
Independent Review of Deaths and Serious Incidents in Policy Custody (available here
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/deaths-and-serious-incidents-in-police-custody).
The Review recognised the disproportionate number of deaths of people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic groups following restraint and the role of institutional racism and police training and concluded that the "Deaths of people from BAME communities, in particular young black men, resonate with the black community's experience of systemic racism."
In June 2020, YouGov carried out opinion polling of 300 police officers ranking from Constable up to Chief Superintendent in Great Britain (
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politic...e_article&utm_campaign=police_and_steteotpyes).
Two in five officers (41%) agreed with the statement that stereotypes about other groups of police are usually true. This is a higher figure than the general public - a quarter (26%) of them agreed with this. 55% of police officers surveyed also think that human rights laws have been bad for criminal justice: