Young people at Voyage and within our community constantly notice the poor treatment of teaching staff towards children in Hackney schools, and the lack of safe and secure environments built on mutual trust and respect. There is something to be said about the fact that this incident occurred within the walls of a London school, where teachers who should have been questioning the grounds on which the search was based, ended up remaining silent and complicit in this clear act of racial bias and extreme misuse of power. No child should be strip searched, let alone a young secondary school student ‘suspected of smelling of cannabis’.

Such an atrocity was only possible due to the structural and institutional racism and sexism which permeates throughout the police force and education system alike. Who are we to put our trust in the very organisations designed to protect us if they are the ones harming our children and abusing their power?

At Voyage, we have a police accountability group, and pride ourselves on consistent and meaningful police interaction. We aim to liaise with senior police officers, who can be held accountable and offer firsthand insights into their organisation. Creating a forum for open discussion and critique, with the possibility of strengthening trust between the police and the communities they have been assigned to safeguard.

Voyage has been working with police and police associations for over 20 years, and evidently these discussions have not made appropriate changes to the treatment of black children in London. Instead of putting funding into an increased police presence, the police must correct their broken relationship with the black community. Unlimited police access to schools has warped the boundaries between safety and criminalisation, when really, funding and efforts should be directed towards education programmes, youth clubs and charities, in order to efficiently serve the needs of black communities.

Voyage has routinely been denied access to schools, where we are there to recruit young people to join an organisation based on empowerment, self confidence and knowledge, whilst police are given a free pass inside institutions, often where their presence actually contributes to feelings of unease rather than safety.

Ultimately, we understand that the role of the police (in principle) is to serve and protect communities, and prevent crime in areas, and the message here is not that we should not have a police force. However, what has been made clear over the years is that drastic structural changes are required. This starts with the inclusion of respected individuals who are likely to be well received by communities, and rigorous police training to encourage emphatic, skilled and well educated officers who can conduct themselves accordingly and fairly.

Whilst racial bias is unfortunately inherent within white communities, it is important to ensure that teachers, police officers and others employed to work with people in predominantly ethnic minority communities are sensitive towards the issues they face.

It is necessary to employ public servants who understand their environments and properly and positively engage in the communities that they work in. In many Hackney schools, the teachers working there are white British women, often who are first-time educators. When teachers in an institution do not reflect the demographic that they teach, or have extensive knowledge of their communities, we risk very severe consequences. Students are quickly written-off as ‘misbehaved’ and are cast aside by teachers, either through exclusion or mistreatment.

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