Categories
Journalism

Police Brutality in England

Writing about police brutality in Plymouth, England is contentious and it is a task that brings many risks; however, I conclude that no amount of risk is greater than when we all stay silent about the realities the system puts us through even when we are fully innocent.

In reality, I am scared of many things, and unfortunately, freedom of expression is dangerous in the UK where people are relentlessly censored and surveilled by the state; however, I feel that staying silent is the same as expressing; that is, you also get injustice and get picked by the system either way when you are an immigrant.

It breaks me, to know that I AM NOT SAFE in England. To know that the people whose job is to ‘protect’ me, are the same perpetrators of one of the biggest injustices I’ve been put through in my life. I feel at risk of being a victim of crime now, because I have grown to fear rather than to respect the local police forces. It is a shame for them to be like this.

So I decided to publish the evidence, and if they (the Devon & Cornwall Police) brutalise me again… Well, I guess it was predisposed to happen as usual. Yet, the truly scary realisation is to know that I was fully innocent as a person with mental disabilities that have resulted from oppression. Therefore, what they keep doing, and what took place should have NEVER happened in the first place.

This is the report I sent to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC):

I was placed in a sexually degrading position, and also a position which is called “the scorpion” due to how when the person is facing the ground and her legs are bent upwards and backwards crossed, it looks like an scorpion. This torture position has been used in foreign jurisdictions to deal with genocidal cases of serial killers. I believe both positions were unnecessary, and were quite more difficult to accomplish than any other way to use direct force against a female, Islamic/ Muslim, Colombian body. My fragile body diagnosed with lifelong weakening conditions was in no way a threat, and there is no justification in this universe to explain why such positions were used on me. Whilst the gestapo officers continued to be present inside the cell where they tortured me in front of CCTV cameras by placing me in such positions (I even asked an officer whether they had ever raped someone in the first position, and that is when he switched it to the scorpion position which is humiliating too, but perhaps less sexually threatening). I instantly became extremely scared and such brutality exacerbated my (now diagnosed) acute psychotic disorder and I attempted to immediately kill myself my smashing my forehead against the concrete cell’s floor. I don’t recall much from here due to trauma.

I have recollections of how two police officers where standing in the cell’s door and non-sarcastically saying out loud: “OH YEAH, I AM REALLY ENJOYING THIS”, to which the other police officer added “IT’S YOUR HEAD, WE DON’T CARE”. There was more callous and cruel commentary of this kind happening as I was running from one side of the wall to the other with speed and force to smash my head until blood started spurting and tainting the walls and floor in red in front of these two bystander officers who expressed schadenfreude and gratification to be present with me there, whilst I killed myself. I almost succeeded, but I think I must have lost consciousness because I don’t remember much after this horrible scene of police cruelty. By the time I arrived at the PICU (psychiatric intensive care unit), I looked like a Panda and everyone noticed the state the police put me in, and how close I was to succeeding in committing suicide as a result of the impact that the sexually and humiliating positions had on me at the time. I was sent to Chester Ward at the The Priory Hospital Middleton St. George, and they instantly took pictures of the police’s ‘artwork’ with my face and life, and filed a safeguarding referral due to how neglected, abused, and brutalised I was at the police station.

By BETSHY

Student, artist, and scientist.

Leave a Reply