Police strip search 15-year old in school

[LeytonCatLady]

How disgusting. This makes me furious. This poor girl did not deserve to be humiliated and abused. Nobody does. The busybody teacher who reported her should be ashamed and the pervy pigs who violated her need to be sacked.

 

[tonysingh]

According to this report, the search was carried out by female officers (not that that makes everything OK, just clarifying this one point)



The idea that because she smelt of cannabis she must have some in her possession, or even that she must herself have been smoking, is a nonsense, TBH.

Ah right, thank you for clarification.

 

[SpookyFrank]

I'm not really into retributive justice but these evil fucking rapist nonce filth need their legs broken. The police force that allowed this to happen needs to be burnt to the ground and the earth sown with salt where once it stood.

 

[andysays]

There's now a more recent version of the story on the BBC website with more details including this

A 15-year-old black schoolgirl strip-searched by police was pulled out of an exam so the "traumatic incident" could take place, a safeguarding report says.

The victim's mother told the report that after the strip-search in 2020, her daughter had been "asked to go back into the exam" she had been sitting "without any teacher asking her about how she felt knowing what she had just gone through".

 

[tonysingh]

There's now a more recent version of the story on the BBC website with more details including this

Which is almost like being violated again imho

 

[SpookyFrank]

Have you come up against the police much and seen how much that they can distort your rights

Yes. I'm white though. I've had few unwarranted kickings off them but the way they treat black people, black women in particular, is on an entirely different level.

The fact they do these things does not mean we should just all roll over and let them. It means precisely the opposite.

 

[scifisam]

I don't understand the teachers' actions at all. Pull a kid out of an exam, search her bags, then call the cops, all for a smell of weed? I really hope they're not teaching any more.

 

[RainbowTown]

I don't understand the teachers' actions at all. Pull a kid out of an exam, search her bags, then call the cops, all for a smell of weed? I really hope they're not teaching any more.

Probably off work with 'stress'.

 

[planetgeli]

This is a situation (smelling of weed) we deal with just about every other day. Surprisingly, it never ends in a strip search.

A substantial minority of our kids smoke weed. They are quite open about it. It is normal to them. Sometimes they take the piss and try smoking at school. They nearly always get caught and sent home for a day. Sometimes they turn up stinking of weed. They get searched. Nothing ever gets found because they've literally just had a joint before getting on the bus and they stink of that. Not proven and not our issue to police.

Nobody gets strip-searched. And the bag searches and the pat downs are done with humour. Everyone knows the score.

What happened here seems the opposite of that. Literally incredible. But true. How the school allowed that to happen...beyond bizarre. It's not like only one person (staff) would have been involved here.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Probably off work with 'stress'.

Teachers aren't like coppers, we're not able to pull indefinite sick leave on spurious grounds.

TBH this could only happen at a school that was irredeemably rotten to the bone. So it's entirely possible the staff don't think they've done anything wrong. There are a lot of schools with utterly demented, and often overtly racist, 'behaviour policies'. London in particular seems to be a testing ground for this neo-Victorian approach. And the government fucking loves it.

 

[scifisam]

This is a situation (smelling of weed) we deal with just about every other day. Surprisingly, it never ends in a strip search.

A substantial minority of our kids smoke weed. They are quite open about it. It is normal to them. Sometimes they take the piss and try smoking at school. They nearly always get caught and sent home for a day. Sometimes they turn up stinking of weed. They get searched. Nothing ever gets found because they've literally just had a joint before getting on the bus and they stink of that. Not proven and not our issue to police.

Nobody gets strip-searched. And the bag searches and the pat downs are done with humour. Everyone knows the score.

What happened here seems the opposite of that. Literally incredible. But true. How the school allowed that to happen...beyond bizarre. It's not like only one person (staff) would have been involved here.

Yup, it's just not an unusual situation. Doing a quick bag/pockets search is reasonable (partly to try and make sure they're not going to be selling on while in the school). And I bet you wouldn't do the search during an exam, either.

 

[Thora]

This is a situation (smelling of weed) we deal with just about every other day. Surprisingly, it never ends in a strip search.

A substantial minority of our kids smoke weed. They are quite open about it. It is normal to them. Sometimes they take the piss and try smoking at school. They nearly always get caught and sent home for a day. Sometimes they turn up stinking of weed. They get searched. Nothing ever gets found because they've literally just had a joint before getting on the bus and they stink of that. Not proven and not our issue to police.

Nobody gets strip-searched. And the bag searches and the pat downs are done with humour. Everyone knows the score.

What happened here seems the opposite of that. Literally incredible. But true. How the school allowed that to happen...beyond bizarre. It's not like only one person (staff) would have been involved here.

Do at your school not get strip searched because you don’t involve the police at all, or because police have never strip searched kids when they have been called?

 

[existentialist]

I totally agree but in the absence of supervision, there were two male officers and two female officers present.

From a safeguarding point of view, that shouldn't matter - each and every teacher has a responsibility for safeguarding for the children under their care.

That said, I can well understand that having a bunch of coppers laying down (their version of the) law can be difficult to challenge...but if those whose job it is to challenge such behaviour don't, this is what we end up with. I hope that, if nothing else, this appalling abuse will put some fire in the blood of other teachers who may have to face down police officers in similar situations.

 

[clicker]

It's just common sense (massive understatement) for a teacher to accompany her. How did they let the child go alone into a room with police? Unbelievable.

 

[existentialist]

Yes that is the theory. Have you come up against the police much and seen how much that they can distort your rights

These were teachers. Professionals, at their workplace. People who will have done regular child protection training and refreshers. They SHOULD have known what to do. They SHOULD have been sufficiently aware of the safeguarding rules to challenge the police officers.

They didn't. Although, ultimately, the abuse of authority was the police officers' offence, although that doesn't let the teachers off the hook.

 

[Mumbles274]

This story has stuck in my mind like many awful stories about the police, its almost just another sorry example of how much of a malign institution they are in society and yet no, they can go lower and lower. Added to this we have the involvement of an educational institution. Shocked as I am, I am reminded of when my daughter was in school and told me one time the police had come in, invited, with sniffer dogs to search students. I was so furious and didn't know what to make or do about that at the time. From what I remember, some students were positively identified but I can't remember what happened to them.

 

[ElizabethofYork]

Isn't the school (teachers) legally in loco parentis?

 

[scifisam]

Isn't the school (teachers) legally in loco parentis?

Can be sometimes. But the teachers didn't stay in the room with the girl while she was being searched.

 

[Pickman's model]

Isn't the school (teachers) legally in loco parentis?

yeh but there was no appropriate adult with her in the room, teacher, parent, or someone dragged in off the street

 

[ElizabethofYork]

Can be sometimes. But the teachers didn't stay in the room with the girl while she was being searched.

But they surely had a duty of care to the girl. They were shockingly neglectful to let this happen.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Isn't the school (teachers) legally in loco parentis?

This has no real meaning in law AFAIK. And teachers are subject to oversight, disciplinary procedures etc that parents aren't. Our staff room has special 'report a member of staff' forms on prominent display. These go directly to the headteacher or, if you're reporting the headteacher, to the chair of governors. You can even report yourself.

 

[scifisam]

But they surely had a duty of care to the girl. They were shockingly neglectful to let this happen.

Yup. There should be a proper investigation - I'd like to think that maybe it was one teacher or member of the SMT who was in charge of it all and some other teachers involved protested - but telling her to go into back into an exam straight away makes that less likely.

 

[Spymaster]

Would you say that Duty of Care requires a group of policeman to look up the anus of an unaccompanied fifteen year old schoolgirl who is on her period ?

It was two police women, not a group of men. Not that it makes it any more acceptable.

 

[planetgeli]

Do at your school not get strip searched because you don’t involve the police at all, or because police have never strip searched kids when they have been called?

We would never involve the police in this situation.

We have involved the police in the past when obvious dealing/piss-taking was occurring (caught red-handed). Twice I know of. One ended up with a favourite pupil of mine hitting me with a rock (he was aiming at the school mini bus, shit shot) and the other was a horrible experience as "Pupil A" thought he had every right to have cannabis on him and hated the police with a vengeance so fought back and was handcuffed pinned to the ground. Really horrible to see.

Just legalize it.

 

[steveo87]

As horrendous as this is.

Why am I not surprised its the Met?

 

[Fozzie Bear]

 

[Fozzie Bear]

 

[Fozzie Bear]

Absolutely fuming that all this stuff is still happening in Hackney.

 

[Aladdin]

Appalling.

The school needs closing.
And those cops should do time for assault.

 

[dessiato]

When I read things like this about the Met I think of one of my nephews who joined last year. He's a lovely, kind, caring young man. I fear for what they will turn him into.