Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 10:37:13 -0400
To: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
From: Matthew Gaylor <freematt@coil.com>
Subject: UK: Metropolitan Police Trying To Shut Down Screenings Of Death
 In Custody Video
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" ; format="flowed"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by aztec.asu.edu id IAA01106

From: "Moon Kat" <lavalake@hotmail.com>
To: freematt@coil.com
Subject: Metropolitan police trying to shut down screenings of death 
in custody video
Date: Fri, 17 Aug 2001 08:40:50 +0000


Hi Matt - Greetings from London.  Thought you might like to take a 
look at this.

Regards

Dan

Incidentally, I will be screening this film myself in a few weeks 
time, somewhere at an out-door location.



The film that refuses to die

The makers of a documentary on deaths in police custody are defying 
threats to stop the film being shown. They believe nothing less than 
freedom of expression is at stake

Martin Bright
Sunday August 12, 2001
The Observer

The makers of a controversial film narrated by British actress Cathy 
Tyson about deaths in police custody are planning a wave of 
nationwide "guerrilla screenings" to defy police threats of legal 
action to stop the film being shown.

An unprecedented campaign by police lawyers who have targeted venues 
that planned to show the film has already led to two cancellations in 
London. A third screening at Conway Hall, a London venue that prides 
itself on its tradition of upholding freedom of speech, only went 
ahead after managers left the building and the audience seized 
projection facilities.

Injustice, which took seven years to make, includes calls for several 
Metropolitan Police officers to be prosecuted. But the Police 
Federation, through its solicitors Russell, Jones and Walker, has 
sent a series of legal warnings to cinemas planning to screen the 
film, often just minutes before it is due to be shown.

The film makers Migrant Media have developed a last-minute strategy 
of shifting the venue to defy the police ban. The Cornerhouse, an 
independent cinema in Manchester, was forced to cancel a screening of 
the film on 26 July after threats from the police, but an alternative 
showing was set up at a squatted café round the corner. Similar 
tactics were used when police stopped a screening this month at The 
Lux, an independent cinema in Hoxton, east London. The screening was 
moved to a pub.

Tyson, who starred with Bob Hoskins in Mona Lisa, said she became 
involved because of her "deep respect" for the families of the 
victims. She told The Observer: "The fact that they (the police) are 
trying to get this film stopped is sinister. I am not anti-police, 
but why don't they come forward and freely admit what has gone on in 
these cases." Injustice director Ken Fero said: "One American civil 
rights activist said it reminded him of underground film screenings 
he's seen in the Soviet Union. It is amazing to think it has come to 
this in Britain. But it's the only way to get the film shown."

In the past three decades there have been 1,000 deaths in police 
custody, prisons and mental institutions, without a single 
conviction. The film concentrates on the cases of three men - Shiji 
Lapite, Brian Douglas and Ibrahima Sey - who all died in the 
mid-Nineties from injuries received while they were being arrested by 
Metropolitan Police officers in different parts of London. Shiji 
Lapite, a Nigerian asylum-seeker and father of two, was stopped by 
police in Hackney in December 1994 for "acting suspiciously". 
Officers said that they found crack cocaine at the scene. In a 
struggle one officer held Lapite in a headlock while a fellow officer 
kicked him in the head.

The coroner found more than 40 areas of injury on Lapite's body, 
including crushed bones at the front of his neck and severe bruising 
across his back. As he was being loaded into a police van, witnesses 
saw his head "lolling about".

According to Lapite's lawyer, Raju Bhatt, the officers at the inquest 
described the Nigerian as "the biggest, strongest, most violent black 
man they had ever seen". Despite this, the only injuries suffered by 
the police officers were a scratch on the tip of one man's finger and 
a bite mark on the shoulder of the officer using the head lock.

The jury in the inquest took 20 minutes to come to a unanimous 
verdict of unlawful killing. However, the Crown Prosecution Service 
decided not to proceed against the two officers involved, Paul Wright 
and Andrew McCallum.

Five months after the death of Shiji Lapite, Brian Douglas was 
stopped by police in Clapham, south London, after a night out with a 
friend. Two officers, Mark Tuffy and Paul Harrison, admit using 
batons to restrain Douglas before bundling him into a police van and 
taking him to Kennington police station.

Despite serious head injuries, he was at the station for 15 hours 
before being taken to hospital. It later emerged he had a fractured 
skull and damage to his brain stem. He died almost a week later. At 
the inquest Tuffy said his baton had accidentally slipped when he hit 
Douglas on the shoulder. Evidence at the inquest said the force of 
the blow was equivalent to being dropped from 11 times his own height 
on to his head. The jury returned a verdict of misadventure, later 
challenged unsuccessfully by the family at the High Court.

The third case featured in Injustice involved Ibrahima Sey, a Muslim 
from the Gambia, who had just celebrated the birth of his daughter. 
In March 1996 police were called to a domestic dispute at Sey's home 
in Forest Gate, east London. Police later reported that there had 
been "a bit of a scuffle" during which CS gas had been used.

Relatives were told the next day that Ibrahima had "passed away" in 
the custody suite at Ilford police station. When they were shown his 
body they saw he was badly bruised on his forehead and stomach - the 
cause of death was officially recorded as "restraint asphyxia". The 
inquest jury was so appalled it insisted on adding manslaughter to 
the verdict of unlawful killing.

Correspondence seen by The Observer shows that the custody officer in 
the case, Stephen Highton, believes the film clearly accuses him and 
his colleagues of murder, a charge they deny. There are no interviews 
with police in the film, although a spokesman for Migrant Media said 
individual officers had been approached in each case for comment.

Injustice is intended as a tribute to the families of those who have 
died in custody who have together formed the United Friends and 
Families Campaign. The Police Federation claims it is only opposed to 
the film because it contains scenes where officers are openly and 
repeatedly accused by relatives and their supporters of being 
"murderers". In correspondence seen by The Observer, a lawyer for 
some of the officers told a cinema planning to show the film there 
was no legal basis for any of the accusations. He warned showing it 
could result in "very substantial" libel damages.

This is particularly problematic in the case of Douglas, where the 
inquest jury decided that there had been no wrongdoing. But lawyers 
acting for Migrant Media have advised them that the public interest 
in showing the film outweighs the concerns of the officers, whose 
version of events is clearly stated.

Eva Tarr Kirkhope, who runs the Metro Cinema in London's West End, 
the first venue targeted by the police campaign, added her voice to 
calls to allow the film a national release: "The families present at 
the screening were devastated. I am extremely angry about the 
situation and hope I will be able to show the film in the future."

The publicity surrounding the film has also raised hopes of a full 
public inquiry into deaths in police custody. Amnesty International 
and the civil rights group Liberty have raised the issue with the 
United Nations, which is due to report on Britain's record on human 
rights and racism later this year.

Brenda Weinberg, the sister of Douglas and chair of the United 
Friends and Families Campaign, said: "The police are clearly 
frightened of the families and the campaign, so they are threatening 
to sue the cinemas." The new Home Secretary, David Blunkett has 
expressed concern about the number of deaths in custody, and the 
United Friends and Families Campaign is preparing to raise money for 
private prosecutions. "This is more than just a documentary, this is 
a political campaign," Fero said. "This has taken seven years of my 
life, and I am not about to give up now."

The next screening of Injustice will take place in Liverpool this 
Saturday at the launch of the campaign for James Ashley, shot dead by 
police in 1998. For details see www.injusticefilm.co.uk


Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in
receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
---


Subscribe to Freematt's Alerts: Pro-Individual Rights Issues
Send a blank message to: freematt@coil.com with the words subscribe FA
on the subject line. List is private and moderated (7-30 messages per week)
Matthew Gaylor, (614) 313-5722  ICQ: 106212065   Archived at 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fa/