“They lie and lie and lie with impunity”: South Wales Police’s Role In Three Killings
Kaya Davies traces three of many instances of the South Wales Police force’s malpractice, arguing that South Wales Police have sought to dehumanise both their victims and the communities they serve in their media management.
Ely Police Station photo by Tony Hodge via Wikimedia Commons
On May 22nd, two boys, Kyrees Sullivan, 16, and Harvey Evans, 15 died in a road accident in Ely, Cardiff, moments after CCTV captured them being chased on e-bikes by a police van. Nine hours of rioting followed. Cars were torched, missiles and fireworks thrown, and police in riot gear reacted with force.
The police were initially slow to report the deaths of the two boys. The narrative eventually offered by South Wales Police and crime commissioner Alan Michael, to be presented by the BBC, was that there had been no police presence prior to the incident and that they only arrived having received ‘reports of a collision’. Alun Michael clarified that he had been briefed prior to these statements. The following morning, he repeated them on BBC Radio Wales.
It was not until the following evening, on the 23rd, that the South Wales Police force issued a statement confirming receipt of the CCTV footage, showing two boys on e-bikes being chased by a police van, minutes before the police had held they attended the scene where the two boys had been killed. They took no questions. Alun Michael refused to comment, claiming only that he ‘was not misinformed’.
“They showed nothing but disdain for the community…”
On the morning of the 24th, Alun Michael again appeared on BBC Radio Wales stating that, to his knowledge, there had been no police chase. Indeed, he still maintains that he did not lie or mislead people. It was against this misreporting and apparent narrative manipulation by South Wales Police that Ely residents, in the hours following the killing, took to social media and the PA News Agency to recount what they had witnessed to the outside world: that the boys had been chased by the police van prior to their crash. Their whistleblowing was dismissed as ‘rumours’ by the police force, and it was against this ignoring of their recounts by the BBC and national media, whose information, I reiterate, was provided by the police, that the residents of Ely rioted.
Local resident John Urquhart, speaking to WalesOnline on May 22nd, the night of the riots, highlighted that “[the police] did not communicate with the crowd, there was no attempt to communicate with the crowd and they showed nothing but disdain for the community and acted like we didn’t deserve to know what happened on our own doorstep’. The police, in prioritising their assumed PR role above showing genuine concern for residents in Ely, only galvanised the riots throughout the evening.
The BBC, despite what is now clear, has since cited the circulation of ‘rumours’ via social media by the residents of Ely as inciting the ensuing violence. The blame has been shifted onto the local community. What was so clearly an act of desperation and mourning – the most genuine grassroots protest – in the wake of the loss of two of their own, has been manipulated as pure disorder.
What the Ely riots so clearly demonstrate is the true power of the police. Extending beyond force and maintenance of order, the police, as an organ of the state, are assumed to be a trusted and legitimate body. With the support of the media, they can control the narrative of events, and ensure they remain aligned with the status quo. They are able to vilify those working class communities and blame those “rioters” for driving tensions, exempting themselves from scrutiny.
The police have been unafraid to continue using their power arbitrarily in the aftermath of the Ely riots: just three days following the riot, nine teenagers were arrested, most under sixteen – a fact highlighted by an open letter to Mark Drakeford and the CPS, calling for an amnesty. Twenty-seven people have since been arrested as a result of the riot. By contrast, it was not until August 31st that the IOPC even began to consider any kind of police accountability, announcing that their subsequent report would examine whether there was any point at which the officer’s decisions and actions in the police van constituted a pursuit. The investigation is still ongoing.
“The police flatten matters of austerity, racism…or even, in the case of Kyrees and Harvey, the use of e-bikes and road safety, into an adversarial issue of ‘disorder’”
This is not the first time that residents of Ely have been compelled to riot; thirty-two years ago, residents threw stones, petrol bombs, and fired air rifles, at a general store after the shopkeeper had won a court injunction stopping a neighbouring shop from selling food and bread at discount, in what became known as the ‘Ely Bread Riots’. Speaking thirty years after the riots, ahead of his S4C documentary Trelai, Y Terfysg a Fi (Ely, the Riot and Me), BBC presenter Jason Mohammad expressed his anger that the Westminster and Senedd governments had not addressed the needs of those in Ely, despite their outcries. Of the nine Ely areas in the Welsh Index of Multiple Deprivation, six are within the top ten most deprived in Cardiff, out of a 214 total. Ely has more children eligible for free school meals than any other community in Wales. Tory austerity has deeply injured the community. A certain focus on the so-called ‘Ely estate’ is warranted.
But the South Wales Police force, while serving just 10% of Wales’ geographical area, provides a policing service to 63 of the 100 most deprived communities in Wales. And the people of South Wales are acutely aware of police brutality and its trusted role in public communications and the mainstream media. During the Miners’ Strike, the tabloid newspapers, under Murdoch, aligned with the government and police. Miners were then portrayed as thugs, Arthur Scargill a ‘Nazi’, and the police as heroic figures. Many South Walian communities are reeling in recent years over deaths steeped with police malpractice and poor communication.
South Wales Police have still not accounted for the death of Mohamud Hassan in Cardiff in early 2021, who died after one night in police custody following a mere ‘breach of the peace’, having told friends he had been assaulted by police officers throughout his arrest. Almost three years on, during the ongoing hearing, it has been reported that the officer facing a gross misconduct allegation in connection with Mr. Hassan’s death was ‘gratuitous’ in his use of force, as he feared Mr. Hassan would spit at him. The IOPC has been criticised for its insensitivity towards the family in the interim, and its denial throughout the investigation of any institutional race issue within the South Wales Police force.
The police investigation of the death of Christopher Kapassa, a 13-year-old boy who drowned after he was pushed into the River Cynon in South Wales by a 14-year-old boy, only reinforces the case for the police force’s institutional racism. The death was declared an ‘accident’ within 24 hours by the South Wales Police, despite there being evidence to support a prosecution for manslaughter, and that Kapessa had previously suffered racist abuse and was the only black child at the scene of the incident. An inquest is expected to be held in 2024 – four years after the event.
The Police’s control on the public perception of crime is harmful not only in that it fails to do justice to those directly affected, but that it fails to do justice to these communities. The police flatten matters of austerity, racism (as an issue both within the community and institutionally, amongst the police and wider justice system), or even, in the case of Kyrees and Harvey, the use of e-bikes and road safety, into an adversarial issue of ‘disorder’. This explaining away of the true nature of community relations only serves to further dehumanise those communities. The police can utilise their apparent legitimacy to their advantage.
It was Barnard Williams who made the crude, but correct, observation that police officers de facto are simply ‘one lot of people’ who have been given power over ‘another lot of people’; and, since ‘power itself does not justify’, the justification of police power is in principle continually necessary. The police can oftentimes rely on their accumulated public goodwill to retain legitimacy even when they have behaved in unjustifiable ways. While this ‘accumulated public goodwill’ may exist on a national level – for example, that the BBC was sourcing its information from officers on the ground would give the narrative a mark of reliability for some – it certainly does not exist in South Wales.
The events in Ely demonstrate the tragic implications of a police force which treats the community it serves as an adversary. Yet, wherever there is a rise of ‘anti-social behaviour’, whether this is claimed to be associated with young people or substance misuse, the response is the deployment of more police officers. It is easier to criminalise than it is to facilitate genuine community engagement in an area where, through thirteen years of Tory cuts and austerity, community life has been systematically eroded.
These deaths are devastating both on their own terms and as representations of this continued neglect of South Wales; this cycle looks set to continue.
—————————————————————
Following a request for comment from South Wales Police, Paul Fisher, Head of News, offered a reply which is paraphrased below:
On the death of Mohamud Hassan, Fisher points to comments made at a Pre-Inquest Review by the Coroner who denied the likelihood of a causal link between Mr Hassan’s treatment by officers during his detention and his subsequent death. Fisher also points out that allegations made against the officer facing gross misconduct allegations were not proven and his use of force was found to be proportionate and reasonable. The Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) were the ones who came to this conclusion and they are an entity separate to the Police, who the latter cannot be expected to answer for. They hope that the ongoing investigation will answer any more questions regarding his death.
Regarding the death of Christopher Kapassa, Fisher highlights that any evidence pertaining to Kapassa’s death, including that which relates to Kapassa’s previous experience of racist abuse, was the result of rigorous investigation on the part of police. A team of detectives gathered 170 statements and conducted 54 child interviews in relation to this case. Fisher highlights that it was the Crown Prosecution Service, not the police, who chose not to prosecute this incident.
Finally, Fisher notes that the Ely incident is subject to ongoing IOPC investigation to ensure that the matter comes under independent scrutiny.
—————————————————————
In response, the author has highlighted the role of the IOPC in this finding, and those criticisms directed towards it, in the above article.
Moreover, while evidence may have later been collated with regards to Christopher Kapassa, it remains that the police declared his death an ‘accident’ within 24 hours and did not initially treat it as a crime scene. It was only after this, when a complaint was lodged against the police, that South Wales Police appointed a new major police investigation team who submitted new evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service. The author omitted mention of the CPS’ perverse decision under the so-called ‘public interest test’ due to the focus of the article on police behaviour which, notwithstanding the response of Fisher, remains reprehensible.