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News: Black Woman Found Dead UK Prison. Victim of Police Brutality
Member Since: 6/20/2011
Posts: 6,575
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Black Woman Found Dead UK Prison. Victim of Police Brutality
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Sarah Reed's mother: 'My daughter was failed by many and I was ignored'
In January, Sarah Reed was found dead in her cell at Holloway prison. She had been the victim of a notorious police brutality case in 2012 and suffered mental health issues known to prison officers, doctors, social workers, lawyers and police. So why was she there? Her mother Marylin tells her story for the first time
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Sarah Reed's mother: 'My daughter was failed by many and I was ignored'
When Marylin visited her daughter in Holloway prison on 2 January, she was dismayed to find Sarah looking unwell, and behaving strangely. She remembers a prison guard asking her: “Have you got any idea what’s wrong with her?” It was a disconcerting question, because prison staff should have known that Sarah Reed had serious, long-standing mental health problems.
Nine days later, Sarah, 32, was found dead in her cell. The family was told first by the prison that she was found hanging, and later that she was found lying on her bed, with a “sophisticated ligature”. The precise sequence of events in the months, days and hours leading up to her death will remain unclear until an inquest is held later this year, but already the tragedy has raised important (if depressingly familiar) questions about the treatment of people with serious mental illness by the criminal justice system, and how that intersects with the institutional racism faced by black Britons.
What is particularly disturbing about Sarah’s case, is that her name was already well-known to race and mental health campaigners. In 2012, she was at the centre of a police brutality case, when a Metropolitan Police constable, James Kiddie, was caught on CCTV, yanking her by the hair, dragging her across the floor, pressing on her neck and punching her several times in the head. The footage of the assault is very painful to watch. Kiddie, who accused her of shoplifting, was convicted of assault, dismissed from his job, and given 150 hours community service.
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Marylin set out to get her daughter help, but in the end there wasn’t time. At 9.10pm on Monday 11 January, she was called by the prison, and told that her daughter had been found dead. She went to Holloway with her son and her mother. Despite repeated requests, they were not allowed to see the body. The coroner’s officer told them that she wanted to “spare them the trauma of looking at her”. They were upset by the treatment they received at the prison, and felt that one officer was laughing at them. It was three days before they were allowed to see her. “I felt like she was still being treated as if she was a living prisoner, and that we as her family had no access, no rights.”
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Lee Jasper, the racial equality campaigner, who helped break the story on his blog, and who is co-ordinating the Sarah Reed justice campaign through Facebook, says: “This case represents elements of racism, sexism and police brutality too often faced by black women within the system. Both in the US and here in the UK, the Black Lives Matter movement is rising, and Sarah’s tragic case will elevate the issue of the treatment of black women in the criminal justice system. Sarah should never have been in prison, period.”
By the time she died, Sarah had experienced enough in her life to make lifting her head high a struggle. Her baby had died from muscular atrophy after several operations and a life spent mainly in hospital. The hospice where the baby died then made the disturbing decision to give Sarah and the father their daughter’s body wrapped in a sheet to take to the undertaker in a taxi. Marylin says: “Sarah became withdrawn immediately. I tried to get her bereavement counselling. They were devastated.”
Then there was the police attack, which disturbed her profoundly. “She was horrified. It affected her because she wasn’t raised with corporal punishment of any kind. She used to say whenever she would see a very large male, tall male, it would make her feel nervous, insecure and frightened,” Marylin says. “She felt more nervous about males, on top of everything else she had gone through, especially Caucasian males.
But by the middle of last year Sarah’s family began to feel she was finally getting some new stability in her life. Although while sectioned in 2014 she had been arrested and charged with GBH, she had been bailed and housed in a studio flat close to her mother and daughter. She was having weekly visits from a mental health team. Her case was ongoing, but Sarah told her family she had acted in self-defence against a sexual assault.
Then, unexpectedly, at a hearing for the case in October 2015, she was remanded into custody and sent to Holloway. Her family is still not clear why she was imprisoned then, although they believe that further psychiatric assessment had been ordered by the court to establish whether she was fit to plead. If this was the case, they are confused about why prison was thought to be a better place for this than hospital.
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Alongside the well-documented disproportionality of police attention that black Britons face is a troubling relationship between the community and mental health services. Figures from last year suggest that black and black British people were more likely than any other ethnic group to be detained under the Mental Health Act, a statistic that the mental health charity Mind attributed to stigma and discrimination, and a failure to provide services that were accessible to non-white communities
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So fed up of this.
British media is ignoring the story and only Vice in the US has posted it.
There are more stories like this that I'll be posting. Instutionalised racism is a serious problem in the UK too.
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 11,858
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So sad to hear. I hate most police.
The media is ignoring the story because it doesn't fit their narrative of black people.
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Member Since: 8/17/2013
Posts: 5,341
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Originally posted by Dark XXX
So sad to hear. I hate most police.
The media is ignoring the story because it doesn't fit their narrative of black people.
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It's because they don't wanna print anything that makes them look like they're on-par with the US for racism.
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Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 16,870
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Europeans need to get into formation. This is unacceptable.
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Member Since: 11/11/2010
Posts: 11,240
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Sicking to hear the whole planet is trash. There is no love in this world.
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 11,012
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Originally posted by Obsession
It's because they don't wanna print anything that makes them look like they're on-par with the US for racism.
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Whilst they should be reporting it, it's true that the UK isn't on-par with US for racism, it just isn't. For instance, the police officer who physically attacked her actually lost his job, was fined, and had to do community service. That wouldn't happen in the US. They would be let off without any sort of repercussion.
Whilst there is systematic racism in the UK, you can't even begin to compare it to the US. The US has a very different history and therefore, relationship with race. A Muslim of Pakistani origin was today elected as the London Mayor, something which would never happen in a place like New York. Of course, I'm drawing comparison between two very different types of discrimination but they're both still oppression.
This is not to take anything away from this poor girl and her family. This story was very sad to read and I nearly broke down in tears near the end.
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Member Since: 6/20/2011
Posts: 6,575
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Originally posted by Bey Admired
Whilst they should be reporting it, it's true that the UK isn't on-par with US for racism, it just isn't. For instance, the police officer who physically attacked her actually lost his job, was fined, and had to do community service. That wouldn't happen in the US. They would be let off without any sort of repercussion.
Whilst there is systematic racism in the UK, you can't even begin to compare it to the US. The US has a very different relationship with race. A Muslim of Pakistani origin was today elected as the London Mayor, something which would never happen in a place like New York. Of course, I'm drawing comparison between two very different types of discrimination but they're both still oppression.
This is not to take anything away from this poor girl and her family. This story was very sad to read and I nearly broke down in tears near the end.
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You are right, the UK is not as OVERTLY racist but systemically it's not far off, it really isn't. The difference is it's swept under the rug to the point that if you discuss racism in the UK as a black person you're shouted down for "making everything about race" or "have a chip on your shoulder" or should "f**k off back to Africa" (though many of us have family who came over from the Caribbean after the wars to help rebuild the UK even though it was less than 200 years since Britain's legally enslaved them)
The riots a few years back were largely to do with racism, esp. the "stop and search" tactics police target ethnic minorities with, esp. black men.
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 11,012
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Originally posted by JonathanLGardner
You are right, the UK is not as OVERTLY racist but systemically it's not far off, it really isn't. The difference is it's swept under the rug to the point that if you discuss racism in the UK as a black person you're shouted down for "making everything about race" or "have a chip on your shoulder" or should "f**k off back to Africa" (though many of us have family who came over from the Caribbean after the wars to help rebuild the UK even though it was less than 200 years since Britain's legally enslaved them)
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I'm sorry but you're so very very wrong. I don't know what you are trying to do here with all of these threads, but stop trying to equate the black experience in America with that in the UK. They are two totally different ends of the spectrum.
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Banned
Member Since: 4/5/2014
Posts: 9,767
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This is so sad to hear 
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Member Since: 6/20/2011
Posts: 6,575
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Originally posted by Bey Admired
I'm sorry but you're so very very wrong. I don't know what you are trying to do here with all of these threads, but stop trying to equate the black experience in America with that in the UK. They are two totally different ends of the spectrum.
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How do you know?
Do you know about the black diaspora?
You're acting as though the US is the only nation with race issues and you're seriously mistaken, no one is saying that things are worse here but that they ARE ISSUES THAT NEED TO BE FIXED AND HEARD.
No one's taking spotlight from your issues just asking that we can actually have our issues acknowledged.
It's funny how the whole world, must stop in its tracks to help Black Lives Matter African-American Lives Matter but yet they're so silent on anything that isn't directly Africa related that their favourite celebrity tweeted about.
Sad. Apalling. Especially when you claim to want equality.
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 11,012
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Originally posted by JonathanLGardner
How do you know?
Do you know about the black diaspora?
You're acting as though the US is the only nation with race issues and you're seriously mistaken, no one is saying that things are worse here but that they ARE ISSUES THAT NEED TO BE FIXED AND HEARD.
No one's taking spotlight from your issues just asking that we can actually have our issues acknowledged.
It's funny how the whole world, must stop in its tracks to help Black Lives Matter African-American Lives Matter but yet they're so silent on anything that isn't directly Africa related that their favourite celebrity tweeted about.
Sad. Apalling. Especially when you claim to want equality.
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I'm very much British, thanks. I've just done my research.
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Member Since: 6/20/2011
Posts: 6,575
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Originally posted by Bey Admired
I'm very much British, thanks. I've just done my research.
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And your research led you to come to a thread about the tragic effects of systemic racism in the UK and your response is "THE US HAVE IT HARDER".
Thanks for your input.
RIP Sarah. You didn't die in vain even if your fellow citizens refuse to learn or even ATTEMPT to make positive changes as a result.
At least in the US things are changing. They don't here because of people like you that push everything under the rug.
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Member Since: 8/6/2015
Posts: 18,803
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Quote:
Originally posted by JonathanLGardner
You're acting as though the US is the only nation with race issues and you're seriously mistaken
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He literally said NOTHING like this at all. He even said:
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Whilst there is systematic racism in the UK
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You're making a blatant straw-man, and I have no idea why.
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 11,012
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Quote:
Originally posted by JonathanLGardner
And your research led you to come to a thread about the tragic effects of systemic racism in the UK and your response is "THE US HAVE IT HARDER".
Thanks for your input.
RIP Sarah. You didn't die in vain even if your fellow citizens refuse to learn or even ATTEMPT to make positive changes as a result.
At least in the US things are changing. They don't here because of people like you that push everything under the rug.
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I'm offended by your disparaging attempts to attack my character by making false accusations; Implying that I don't care for this girl, that I said there's no racism in the UK, that I don't care about racism in the UK, or that I've not done my research on this topic, is just totally wrong and you seriously need to stop.
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Member Since: 6/20/2011
Posts: 6,575
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Originally posted by Dylobs
He literally said NOTHING like this at all. He even said:
You're making a blatant straw-man, and I have no idea why.
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It's off topic.
This is about SARAH REED'S case which happened in the UK.
Diverting the discussion to US issues which are getting media coverage that this isn't is not fair. Can we please just stick to the topic at hand and that's the death of a woman at the hand of authorities who knew she was suffering from mental illness.
When Sandra Bland case dropped did I come in changing the topic to UK crimes? No.
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I'm sorry but you're so very very wrong. I don't know what you are trying to do here with all of these threads, but stop trying to equate the black experience in America with that in the UK. They are two totally different ends of the spectrum.
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You are doing the absolute most. Just discuss the story.
I mentioned briefly in the OP that there has been a lack of media coverage and THERE HAS.
The point I'm making is when something happens racially in the US, ALL WORLD MEDIA, (UK INCLUDED) posts about it.
But I was mainly highlighting the lack of coverage period and you've used that to twist and turn and make the thread all about you.
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 11,012
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Quote:
Originally posted by JonathanLGardner
It's off topic.
This is about SARAH REED'S case which happened in the UK.
Diverting the discussion to US issues which are getting media coverage that this isn't is not fair. Can we please just stick to the topic at hand and that's the death of a woman at the hand of authorities who knew she was suffering from mental illness.
When Sandra Bland case dropped did I come in changing the topic to UK crimes? No.
You are doing the absolute most. Just discuss the story.
I mentioned briefly in the OP that there has been a lack of media coverage and THERE HAS.
The point I'm making is when something happens racially in the US, ALL WORLD MEDIA, (UK INCLUDED) posts about it.
But I was mainly highlighting the lack of coverage period and you've used that to twist and turn and make the thread all about you.
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I'm pretty sure you're just trolling at this point 
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Member Since: 6/20/2011
Posts: 6,575
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Originally posted by Bey Admired
I'm pretty sure you're just trolling at this point |
No you don't get it. Just stick to the topic. This isn't equating to anything else or diminishing the suffering or experience of anyone else, just raisng awareness about injustice and a tragic story, that shouldn't have happened.
I posted a vaild news story and the thread has been ruined. This isn't a joke. It's a serious issue how she was treated and what it means for the future of care for people suffering with mental illness in the UK.
I'm trying to have proper discussion and all some people want to do is argue. I've even got a mod calling my threads "anti-europe" which makes no sense whatever.
I'm literally sat here, apalled by some of the responses here. Some people get it, others haven't. Thankful for the few
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 23,857
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Member Since: 8/7/2015
Posts: 11,012
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Quote:
Originally posted by JonathanLGardner
No you don't get it. Just stick to the topic. This isn't equating to anything else or diminishing the suffering or experience of anyone else, just raisng awareness about injustice and a tragic story, that shouldn't have happened.
I posted a vaild news story and the thread has been ruined. This isn't a joke. It's a serious issue how she was treated and what it means for the future of care for people suffering with mental illness in the UK.
I'm trying to have proper discussion and all some people want to do is argue. I've even got a mod calling my threads "anti-europe" which makes no sense whatever.
I'm literally sat here, apalled by some of the responses here. Some people get it, others haven't. Thankful for the few
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Did you even read my first post in this thread? I posted how there is systematic racism in the UK, how I feel for this girl and her family, how the police officer was punished, and so on. I don't know what else you want from me? It seems to me that you're offended that I said that systematic racism in the US is much worse and that it has a very different history to the UK, but these are just the facts. Whilst there is still much room for progression in the UK, the US is very much behind the UK on this issue. It's not taking away from the black experience in the UK at all, but the reason there isn't as much coverage is because it's not happening as widespread in the UK as it is in the UK due to reasons aforementioned.
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