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news
Met PoliceBlack teen on charity ride ‘grabbed from bike’ by Met police officer
A black teenager has spoken of how he was knocked off his bike into thorny bushes by a plainclothes Metropolitan Police officer who also threatened him with a stun gun. The incident, on the River Lea towpath, happened as 13-year-old Huugo Boateng was taking part in a charity bike ride with his father.
Speaking to the Observer, the teenager said: “I’d turned around to see if my dad had caught up behind me, and suddenly this man came out of nowhere.
“He was crazy angry and shouting. I got scared because I thought he might be mugging me or trying to give me corona so I ran, but there was nowhere to go but in the bushes.”
The youngster was left with cuts on his face after landing head-first in the thorns.
He said that the police officer aimed a Taser at him before handcuffing him, while elsewhere on the path his father Andrew, aged 43, was also put in handcuffs by officers, with the pair suspected of having been involved in a stabbing incident nearby.
The incident happened at around 6.30pm on Thursday 4 June – the day after thousands of people had marched through central London in a Black Lives Matter protest.
Between six and eight police officers were present and Huugo’s father Andrew said: “If this was a normal stop and search, I could respect that. But it is obvious why we were treated the way we were.
“The police came in at high-octane aggression level 10. We were on a family bike ride, and my son was essentially assaulted by a police officer. We were threatened with Tasers even though we weren’t resisting, and then just put in handcuffs.”
Part of the incident was recorded by photographer Louise Paton, who lives on a houseboat moored on the river, with footage published on the Observer’s website, after she began filming following an appeal from Andrew for someone to record what was happening on camera.
In response to a question from her, a police officer said: “The victim at this point was very unwilling to give us descriptions. The only thing he has given us is IC3 [police code for a black person] males on a bike … That’s very vague, isn’t it?”
She said: “The mood was defensive, borderline aggressive and patronising. I was disgusted. It really drove the issue [of racism] home for me.
“The way they spoke to Andrew, the way they treated him and kept him in handcuffs so long when he could prove so quickly he was completely innocent and the wrong person. It was just so disappointing to see.”
Besides his job at City University, Andrew volunteers for the outreach programme Kinckoff@3, whose co-founder Michael Wallace is a police officer with the Met.
He said: “I couldn’t vouch for a more humble and more dedicated member of the community.
“The irony is that Kickoff@3 is about building good relationships with youth and the police, and Andy is instrumental in helping with that programme. The bike ride he was doing was organised by us – we were raising money for a homeless charity and a domestic violence one.”
The Metropolitan police said: “The Met has received a complaint from a member of the public in relation to this incident. The Met takes all complaints seriously and this will be thoroughly investigated.”
Pointing out that he had worked alongside police on initiatives relating to youth and knife crime, Andrew said, “There has to be some learning from the police.
“I got this when I was a teenager, and you were taught to keep your head down and stay calm.
You’d think by now things would have changed and I wouldn’t have to have that conversation with my own kids. I’ve always taught them to trust the police.”
The family live in Tottenham, and their local MP, David Lammy, called for an investigation, saying that the incident “has understandably caused alarm in the community.”
Police said that the stabbing victim, a 21-year-old male, had been taken to hospital and subsequently discharged.
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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111 comments
Yet you've used this news story about a single incident of shitty policing to make a comment suggesting that the police think riding a bike while black is a criminal offence:
...and you failed to inform this commenter that anecdotes do not data make:
How are the chair legs today?
It stops people having to scratch beneath their own surface.
...or the surface of others. How many people have attended BLM rallies recently, not knowing that the organisation is opposed to capitalism, wants to disband the police as we know them, and has now got on board with the anti-Zionism lunatic fringe that has done so much harm to Labour's electoral chances?
Before I get flamed - you don't have to support Hashtag BLM to think that black people's lives matter.
Oddly you have not shown any evidence to back up these claims. Can you please do so?
https://www.gofundme.com/f/ukblm-fund
"We’re guided by a commitment to dismantle imperialism, capitalism"
https://mobile.twitter.com/ukblm/status/1277177624884850689
"mainstream British politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism"
Nothing to do with black lives. Everything to do with the hard left.
You've cherry picked from both those quotes - in context they are less damning and have a different meaning than you are trying to imply.
"We’re guided by a commitment to dismantle imperialism, capitalism, white-supremacy, patriarchy and the state structures that disproportionately harm black people in Britain and around the world."
"As Israel moves forward with the annexation of the West Bank, and mainstream British politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism, and Israel’s settler colonial pursuits, we loudly and clearly stand beside our Palestinian comrades."
Two points - Firstly BLM doesn't represent every black person's perspective or have a monopoly on the debate. Secondly, how does attacking BLM validate your original claim that the police aren't racist?
You should provide rationale and evidence for your original comments rather than trying to avoid scrutiny by obfuscation.
I never said it did. I said that people are marching under a banner with no understanding of the aims of the organisation.
The context around the quotes makes them no less damning, IMO.
Then why have you chosen to hold up BLM as the opposing voice to your perspective and deliberately taken things out of context to seek to discredit them?
Why won't you defend your original claim that the police aren't racist?
Perhaps more to the point here, UKBLM does not represent the Black Lives Matter movement. Despite a lot of coverage referring to it as an 'official account', it's no more 'official' than any other account tweeting on BLM. There is no Black Lives Matter 'organisation' to hold those views - it's a decentralised networked movement of groups and activists.
That's interesting - I know that the 'organisation' is a loose network but wasn't aware that the account was unoffical.
I only engaged with the OP on his own terms as he held this up as a deflection from his original point.
Interesting use of selective quotes. Why didn't you include the full sentences they came from? Because selective quotes can often give a misleading impression...
eg srchar said "the police think riding a bike while black is a criminal offence"
"We’re guided by a commitment to dismantle imperialism, capitalism, white-supremacy, patriarchy and the state structures that disproportionately harm black people in Britain and around the world."
and
"As Israel moves forward with the annexation of the West Bank, and mainstream British politics is gagged of the right to critique Zionism, and Israel’s settler colonial pursuits, we loudly and clearly stand beside our Palestinian comrades."
Also you said nothing about your other claim that BLM want to "disband the police as we know them"
Poor.
Got any evidence for those claims?
Read their manifesto and see yesterday's twitter storm.
What manifesto? They don't appear to have one.
Or perhaps you're a torygraph reader? "Make no mistake – BLM is a radical neo-Marxist political movement" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/12/make-no-mistake-blm-radical-...
To go back to your original comment. You were pulled from your bike by a pcso, because he thought you were jumping a light. Pcso's are coppers in training, some are bound to make poor decisions, but your race wasn't a deciding factor.
For Huugo, he was tackled for matching a description, which as police admitted was severely limit to, being black. Do you think police have ever tackled the first white person they see because that's all the details they have?
Well, I for one am stunned, STUNNED I tell you, to learn that BLM are also anti capitalist and imperialist and pro-defunding of the police.
I find it hilarious that you think these things would be shocking to people.
We continue with this trope because they keep doing shit like this and their colleagues won't call them out.
Not good enough. They never would've dragged a white guy off his bike based on a generic description like that, this is bullshit yet you've chosen to make excuses like so many racist (but I'm not racist 'onest guv!!!) old people. Sad to see on road.cc
Yeah, less perceived racism, more actual ageism!
Here comes the straw man deflection.
Do you really think there is equivalence here?
My apologies, your post had the hallmarks of so many racist boomer rants on FB I made an ageist comment and that is obviously wrong.
Young people can also be racist, that's the amazing freedom we have in this country! Fantastic.
I agree that not all police officers are racist but the police (and the entire criminal justice system) undoubtedly have systemic and institutionalised racial biases.
Maybe you should try to see beyond your own anecdotal experiences and look for actual evidence:
The Colour of Injustice
Met Police 'use force more often against black people'
Met police twice as likely to fine black people over lockdown breaches
BAME deaths in police custody
I think, while our society is still racist to some degree, some bleed-through into any group is inevitable. You're right to say that in the UK at least racism is much less acceptable than it used to be though - I think a good few liberal bods (myself included) would do well to bear that in mind when bemoaning the ills of the present. I do reckon this is an example of poor policing though, aside from questions around racism.
Racist coppers, who'd have thought?.
I'm sure if they received a description as vague as "white male" they would have tackled the first white male they saw too. Yeah sure. *cough* =/
I'm sure you are correct. Neither was the description as vague as "black male", nor is there any suggestion they tackled the first one they saw. So what point are you trying to make?
The description was as vague as "black male on bike", though, wasn't it?
edit: and in the video, one of the police does say they were the first black males they'd encountered along the towpath, IIRC.
"Black males on bikes" (I understood it was the plural). So it makes sense to arrest the first (most proximate to the time and place of the stabbing) matching the description. I don't understand the suggestion that they wait instead for later arrivals. The longer the interval between the offence and the arrest, the less likely are they to be the offender. So that is quite a different construction to they just "arrested the first black male they saw (cough)".
If the suspects in a stabbing are described as being "black males, on bicycles" then the police have to be able to arrest "black males, on bicycles" in proximity.
It all seems justified until it happens to you. Learn some empathy.
not sure what you mean by that. Is it pleasant being arrested on suspicion of a violent crime? I doubt it. I was just trying to stick closely to the charge of racism here - not display my empathy for innocent people being arrested. If there is a gentle way of arresting people you suspect of being armed with a knife and willing to use it that would be a better experience, but would not address the charge of racism.
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