The Battle of Lewisham

The National Front (NF), a far-right British party, reached the height of electoral support in the mid-1970s. In 1977, they announced the organisation of a so-called "Anti-Mugging March" from New Cross to Catford, passing through multicultural Lewisham. The march was announced after the arrest of Black people in Lewisham whose homes had been raided by the police in connection with a series of muggings over the months before. 

As a reaction, the All Lewisham Campaign Against Racsm and Fascism organised counter-demonstrations for the same day since all attempts to have the march banned had failed. 

On 13 August 1977, hundreds of NF members assembled, so did thousands of local people and community leaders to hold a peaceful counter-march. The police tried to reroute the NF but faced forceful opposition. Counter-demonstrators clashed with police and it was the first time that the Metropolitan Police employed riot shields in mainland Britain (via and via and via).

Photographer Syd Shelton documented the events. He is also happens to be the photographer who documented the Rock Against Racism movement

It was about intimidating and frightening people just as the Nazis had done in the streets of Germany in the 1930s.
Syd Shelton

 

"Police motorbikes were set on fire and the police responded with truncheons. There’s one photograph where the horses are coming towards me – I was knocked over to the ground but still had the camera in my hand so I kept going."
Syd Shelton

"It was a violent day, but there was also a degree of triumph because the people were not going to take it anymore. More than 200 people were arrested but nobody really cared because they felt like they had nothing to lose and everything to gain. It’s the most incredibly empowering feeling to come together in huge numbers and feel you can actually change the world — because if you don’t things can do in the opposite direction."
Syd Shelton

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photographs by Syd Shelton  (of Darcus Howe) via and via and by Chris Schwartz via and by John Hodder via and by Syd Shelton again via

The Blinding of Isaac Woodard, Jr.

Isaac Woodard, Jr. (1919-1992) joined the US army in 1942, won promotions, earned the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal, the World War II Victory Medal, and a battle star for unloading ships under enemy fire. On 12th of February 1946, at 8:30 pm, Sergeant Isaac Woodard, Jr. was discharged from Camp Gordon in Georgia. Still wearing a uniform, he bought a ticket to South Carolina where his wife was waiting for him. He was 26 years old.

Somewhere between Georgia and South Carolina, he asked the driver of the Greyhound bus, Alton Blackwell...

…I asked him if he had time to wait for me until I could go to the rest room. He cursed me and said ‘No’ and I cursed him back. Then he told me, ‘Go ahead and get off and hurry back.’ And I did. When the bus got to Aiken, S.C, about a half an hour later, he stopped again, and got off an went and got the police. He came back and told me to come outside for a minute and I did. As I walked out, the driver started to tell the police that I was the one who was disturbing the bus. But when I started to explain, they wouldn’t let me.

Blackwell told the two police officers Lynwood L. Shull and Elliot Long that Woodard had been disruptive. So, when Woodard exited the bus, the two started beating him across the head with a blackjack, then arrested him and headed to the town's prison. On their way, Woodard failed to call Shull "sir" which was the reason for the violence escalating. Shull struck him repeatedly with the end of his nightstick - about the head and directly into his eye sockets. Only a few hours after his discharge from the army, he was left in the cell semi-conscious, bleeding, not receiving any medical attention ... blinding.

There were charges of him being drunk and disorderly. The judge and mayor H. E. Quarles could not ignore the injuries, neither could the others attending the court. Nevertheless, the judge told him he would be fined 50 dollars or 30 days in prison. Since he only had 44 dollars on him, he was brought back to prison (his criminal conviction remained on the record until 2018). "Some medicine" was poured into his blinded eyes and a hot towel was placed on his head. Later he was taken to hospital.

Captain Arthur Clancy, the attending physician, confirmed that Woodard's vision was "nil" and that there was no treatment. Since both eyes had been damaged leaving him permanently disabled, it was obvious that Shull's claim that he had struck Woodard only once needed to be reconsidered. Woodard had to remain in hospital for two months. After his release, he lived a life with constant pain and dependence.  

Shull was charged with the violation of Woodard's right to be secure and not to be beaten. It took the all-white jury 28 minutes to acquit Shull, the courtroom erupted in cheers. 

"Nobody in America should have to go through second class citizenship. Me and a whole lot of Black guys went out fighting for the American cause, now we’re gonna have to get America to give us our civil rights too. We earned them." Isaac Woodard, Jr.

When President Harry S. Truman was told about Woodard's blinding, he stood up exclaiming: "My God! I had no idea it was as terrible as that! We've got to do something!" Truman created a presidential commission on civil rights and signed an executive order creating the President's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services and calling for desegregation of the US military (via and via).

"I spent three-and-a-half years in the service of my country and thought that I would be treated like a man when I returned to civilian life, but I was mistaken." Isaac Woodard, Jr. 

"People should learn how to live with one another and how to treat one another. Because after all, we all are human beings, regardless of color." Isaac Woodard Jr.

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photograph via

Hate Crimes + Older People

Crimes motivated by ageism are, generally speaking, not regarded as hate crimes even though many older victims become hate crime victims because of being old. The very reason why the police define crimes as hate crimes is that by doing so more attention is given to these crimes - which is also the very reason why crimes motivated by ageism need this label. However, how is an older victim to be defined, what is the minimum age? The police, according to a study carried out in the U.K., do not sufficiently recognise older people as a vulnerable group leading to a lack of coordination of activity to give them the service they need. There are no specific policies and procedures to address these crimes.

Older people are vulnerable to a range of crimes. When it comes to doorstep crimes, for instance, 85% of the victims are aged 65 and over, 53% of people aged over 65 have been targeted by fraudsters. 82% of victims of distraction burglary are over the age of 70, about 25% of domestic homicides involve a victim aged 60 and over although the age group accounts for only 18% of the population, homicides are more often committed by family members when the victim is older. 44% of people over 60 have been or are abused by an adult family member (vs 6% of younger victims), experiences of domestic abuse are not recognised and addressed when the victim is older (via).

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- Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (2019). The poor relation. The police and CPS response to crimes against older people; link.
- photograph by Martin Parr via >

Young + Black + Male + Stop + Search

According to an examination of stop and search data (67.997 vehicles were stopped by officers) in London from July to September 2020, young black males were 19 times more likely to be stopped than the general population and 28 times more likely to be stopped on suspicion of carrying weapons (via).



“Being male and being aged under 35 are more powerful predictors of a group having a higher search rate than that group being non-white. The reasons for these differences are likely to be complex: many types of offending are concentrated among some groups (particularly young men) as well as in some neighbourhoods, and there are longstanding issues of bias and stereotyping among police and in society.” (via)

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photograph by James Barnor (wedding guest, London, 1964) via

Training Police for Intercultural Sensitivity. Two Approaches.

Intercultural training aims to train people to interact with people with different cultural backgrounds, to convey information about cultures and countries, to develop self-awarenss by examining one's own "cultural values, beliefs and assumptions". This approach emphasises different individuals coming together, cross-cultural understanding and self-awareness. Race (sic) relations training, on the other hand, focuses on raising awareness of one's own racism, understanding structural racism, combatting harassment based on skin tone, and seeks to change social institutions. This approach emphasises intergroup relations and behavioural outcomes.



In their meta-analysis of methods used to train the Canadian police for intercultural sensitivity, the authors come to the conclusion that programmes using the intercultural approach are significantly more effective than those using race (sic) relations training. Another significant finding is that programmes with ethnically heterogeneous participants are more successful than those with rather homogeneous groups (Ungerleider & McGregor, 2008).

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- Ungerleider, C. & McGregor, J. (2008). Training police for intercultural sensitivity: A critical review and discussion of the research. Canadian Public Administration 36(1), 77-89.
- photograph via

Risk of Being Killed by Police in the United States

"We find that African American men and women, American Indian/Alaska Native men and women, and Latino men face higher lifetime risk of being killed by police than do their white peers. We find that Latina women and Asian/Pacific Islander men and women face lower risk of being killed by police than do their white peers. Risk is highest for black men, who (at current levels of risk) face about a 1 in 1,000 chance of being killed by police over the life course. The average lifetime odds of being killed by police are about 1 in 2,000 for men and about 1 in 33,000 for women. Risk peaks between the ages of 20 y and 35 y for all groups. For young men of color, police use of force is among the leading causes of death."

"Police in the United States kill far more people than do police in other advanced industrial democracies", particularly black men under 30. Here some figures: 

Between the ages of 25 y and 29 y, black men are killed by police at a rate between 2.8 and 4.1 per 100,000, American Indian and Alaska Native men are killed at a rate between 1.5 and 2.8 per 100,000, Asian/Pacific Islander men are killed by police at a rate between 0.3 and 0.6 per 100,000, Latino men at a rate between 1.4 and 2.2 per 100,000, and white men at a rate between 0.9 and 1.4 per 100,000. Inequalities in risk persist throughout the life course.

Interesting links:

::: The Counted. People killed by police in the US (The Guardian): LINK

::: Mapping Police Violence: LINK

::: Police Shootings Database (The Washington Post): LINK

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- Edwards, F, Lee, H. & Esposito, M. (2019). Risk of being killed by police use of force in the United States by age, race–ethnicity, and sex. PNAS, 116 (34) 16793-16798.

- photograph via 

White Police Officers, Black Police Officers, and Their Interpretations of Events

"Six-in-ten white and Hispanic officers characterize police relations with blacks as excellent or good, a view shared by only 32% of their black colleagues. (...) only about a quarter of all white officers (27%) but seven-in-ten of their black colleagues (69%) say the protests that followed fatal encounters between police and black citizens have been motivated at least to some extent by a genuine desire to hold police accountable. (...) virtually all white officers (92%) but only 29% of their black colleagues say that the country has made the changes needed to assure equal rights for blacks."
Pew Research Center



The Pew Research Center national survey - one of the largest ones so far in the U.S. - was conducted by the National Police Research Platform. Attitudes and experiences of almost 8.000 police officers were collected and analysed. Here are some more findings:

"Black officers are much more likely than white or Hispanic officers to say they worry more that officers will not spend enough time diagnosing a situation before acting (61% for blacks vs. 37% for whites and 44% of Hispanics). Overall, blacks and department administrators (59%) are the only two major groups in which a majority is more concerned that officers will act too quickly than worry that they will wait too long before responding to a situation. (...)
Two-thirds of police officers (67%) say the highly publicized fatal encounters between police and blacks are isolated incidents, while 31% describe them as signs of a broader problem. Yet underlying this result are striking differences between the views of black and white officers – differences that mirror the broader fault lines in society at large on racial issues.
A majority of black officers (57%) say these encounters are evidence of a broader problem between police and blacks, a view held by only about a quarter of all white (27%) and Hispanic (26%) officers.
Black female officers in particular are more likely to say these incidents signal a more far-reaching concern. Among all sworn officers, 63% of black women say this, compared with 54% of black men."
Pew Research Center

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photograph by Vivian Maier via

Police, Geriatrics Training and the Ageing Population

"Although there is no shortage of literature focusing on strategies for policing different genders, races (sic), and other groups, older populations have not attracted the same attention."
Sever & Youdin (n.d.:2)

“I learned how the elderly feel after going through the simulations. Before I hadn't put myself in their shoes.” a police officer cited in Brown et al., 2017

Police officers in San Francisco were given a lecture on ageing-related health conditions followed by experiantial trainings on how it can feel to be old through simulations (e.g. walking with a cane that was too short). The brief training "increased police officers' self-reported knowledge and skills", gave them empathy, increased patience, awareness and understanding of ageing-related challenges, which is of enormous importance as our population is lucky enough to be ageing. Police are often first responders to incidents with ageing-related problems and need to be able to deal with older adults who "represent an extremely medically vulnerable group" - no matter if older arrestees or older crime victims.

When police lack knowledge about aging‐related health, they risk causing unintended harms to older adults, such as using excessive force to respond to disruptive behavior related to dementia. Yet previous research shows that police receive little training in aging‐related health and have knowledge gaps that may limit their ability to assess and triage older adults. For example, officers engage with older adults who have sensory, cognitive, and functional impairments, but many report challenges in identifying and responding to these conditions. Similarly, officers perform welfare checks for at‐risk isolated older adults but report lacking knowledge about which community resources are available to help.

The training developed for police officers in San Francisco was incorporated into the police department's Crisis Intervention Training, a training that includes lectures about "special populations" (Brown et al, 2017).

One officer stated that the training will help him treat all individuals “as if they were my parents,” highlighting an important outcome of the training: to build empathy. (via)

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- Brown, R., Ahalt, C., Rivera, J., Stijacic Cenzer, I., Wilhelm, A. & Williams, B. A. (2017). Good Cop, Better Cop: Evaluation of a Geriatrics Training Program for Poice. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 65(8), online
- Sever, B. & Youdin, R. (n.d.). Police Knowledge of Older Populations: The Impact of Training, Experience, and Education, download
- photograph by the great Vivian Maier via

Selecting Headlines, Constructing Reality

More than 200.000 crimes are reported to the police in Vienna every year, less than 2.000 of them are communicated to media. According to an analysis of 3.726 incidents passed to media by the police in 2013 and 2014, there seems to be a pattern in the selection of what is to be reported and what not. While robbery is number one on the list, only every 43rd rape is communicated to media which creates a distortion of reality. The nonrendering of assistance to persons in danger and racist violence are non-existent in media although being reported to the police. At the same time, almost every single robbery or assault in connection with jewellers, banks or taxi drivers is passed to journalists. Drug-related crime, number six on the list, is communicated to journalists every second day. The analysis also shows a correlation between the amount of incidents reported to the press and the districts in which they happen.
Selections do have an impact on our conception of reality and they are also shaped by what the police reports. After all, between 80 and 90% of all the crimes we read about were originally reported by the police (via).



photograph by William Helburn (1960) via

Narrative images: "Free Hugs"

Johnny Nguyen's photograph of Sgt. Bret Barnum hugging 12-year-old protestor Devonte Hart at a Fergusan demonstration in Portland was shared with hundreds of thousands of people in the past days.
"Devonte stood alone in front of a police barrier, wearing a "Free Hugs" sign around his neck as he gazed at the police officers with tears streaming down his face. Sgt. Barnum, who has been with the force for 21 years, approached the young boy and extended his hand. After making small talk, the officer asked why Devonte was crying. According to his mother, the 12-year-old expressed "his concerns regarding the level of police brutality towards young black kids," to which Barnum replied, "Yes. I know. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." The officer then asked if he could have a hug, resulting in this beautifully touching photo captured by Nguyen." (literally via)



- What was it about Devonte that compelled you to stay at the scene and eventually capture your extraordinarily powerful photo?
What compelled me about Devonte was the fact that he was the only one in the midst of a hundred protestors holding signs that could otherwise be seen as violent, angry, hateful, and graphic, who had a sign around his neck that said "Free Hugs." This opposite was what immediately drew me to Devonte. He also had tears running down his face when he hugged people. It wasn't until Sgt. Barnum and Devonte started to speak that I knew I had to really stay at the scene. The stark juxtaposition between White American Cop and Young African-American Boy is what got me.

- Is there a message you want to convey through this photo?
The message I want to convey with this photo is that if hate is the problem, then love is the fix. Love and compassion is the real answer. Just like Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." We must come together, for even a moment, like Devonte and Sgt. Barnum. This photo has become a symbol of humanity, and I hope people can take away from that as much as possible in troubled times like now.

- What's your reaction to your photo being shared with hundreds of thousands of people as it spreads virally across the internet?
I am absolutely honored to see my photo get this much exposure. I believe that a photo isn't complete until it is communicated, and it's gone beyond that. I'm just glad I can do my part not only as a photographer but as a contributing member of society to push the message of positivity, hope, and humanity. It's a dream come true. (literally via)



photographs by Johnny Nguyen via and via, for more photographs taken in Portland see

Police & Diversity: The First Female Police Chief in Afghanistan

In 2007, a recruitment programme started adding 1000 female Afghan police officers between 2007 and 2012. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Ministry initiated a project to encourage women to join the Afghan police force, to recruit and train them. One aim is to have 5000 policewomen by June 2014. But the real aim is not about figures. Working in the police force means having access to education and training. And it also means dealing with a great many challenges ranging from traditional perceptions of gender-related incapability to life-threatening reactions. According to a survey conducted by the UNDP in 2011, 53% of Afghans were in favour of having female police officers (via).
This month, the first female district police chief, Jameela Bayaz, was appointed in Kabul. According to an interior ministry spokesman, this step is to support the role of Afghan women in the police (via). Jameela Bayaz: "This is a chance not just for me, but for the women of Afghanistan."



Photo of military policewoman directing traffic by Keystone/Getty Images (circa 1955) via