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Spartacus R.
editor of Global Africa Pocket News and author of "Violation" and "The Maat Mystery" takes another look at the world.

On the night of Monday 4th of December, 2000, as my friend and I were driving home from a public meeting organised on behalf of the police, about the death of Damilola Taylor, we saw a large crowd and a police car with lights flashing, on the corner of Coldharbour Lane and Somerleyton Road. As we approached, another police car screeched past, sirens ablaze and parked on the other side of the crowd. Coming to an abrupt halt, we noticed a young African man lying face down on the pavement with his head almost into the road. There was one police officer bending over him while two others, standing further away, appeared to be holding back the crowd. The officer nearest the young man asked one of the others to get something and he replied, "It's not worth it."

There were a group of about half a dozen Europeans, who appeared to be in not much of a hurry moving house, standing about three or four feet away from the prostrate young man with their household goods, including a bed and mattress.

We were stopped only a couple of feet from the person on the pavement, when one of the newly arrived officers told us to move on. I drove the car about fifty feet away, parked it and we walked back to see what had happened and whether there was anything we could do to help.

There were, by now four or five officers trying to hold back the crowd, but we got close enough to see that the young person on the ground was bleeding heavily from the front of head area. He was motionless and also appeared not to be breathing.

Instead of enquiring of those present whether there was any medical expertise amongst us, a couple of the officers started setting up a cordon about ten feet away from the body while another told the crowd several times: "Clear the area. Go away if you are not a witness." At this point, everyone who were not police officers drew back behind the cordon.

The mattress people, who appeared to have been on the scene for quite a long time, possibly before the police arrived, picked up their belongings and strolled away. It was they who told us that the young man had been shot. They, or some of the others who were sent away by the police, may have had vital information about the shooting.

At this time, as we stood watching, another police car turned up from the direction of Brixton Road, stopped at the traffic lights and belched out a couple of extremely loud cowboy type officers, both barking orders at drivers and pedestrians alike as they charged into the crowd.

One of them shouted at us to move the cars out of the area beyond the traffic lights. As I drove forward another police car came down Coldharbour Lane from Brixton Road and told all the vehicles to reverse back. They then applied a second outer cordon at the junction of Coldharbour Lane and Atlantic Road traffic lights, thereby trapping my car, another car and a small truck.

Since we were now a captive audience, we returned to the inner cordon to get a better view of what was happening. There were now about seven or eight uniformed and plainclothes officers discussing something, with the apparently lifeless body of the young African man still lying face down on the pavement without any medical attention.

Noticing that there were now about ten of us watching them from behind the inner cordon, one of the officers ordered us to go away. I explained that we wanted to go but we had been trapped and was being held against our will. Hearing this, the little Rottweiler with the big mouth started shouting at us. I shouted back at him and his companions had to hold him back top prevent physical contact between us. Eventually, we returned to our vehicles. We tried to explain that we had arrived on the scene long after the police and therefore we could not have seen anything, but our names and addresses were taken anyway. At this point, having told them that my young son was expecting us home by ten o'clock, we expected to be released. We were not released from our involuntary open prison for another two hours.

Suddenly, we saw officers running away from the body, four of them returning with riot shields. I thought that maybe the police had discovered some new techniques for healing gunshot wounds with riot shields. But they just put down the shields near to the body, turned him over and started going through the motions of trying to resuscitate the young man.

After about five or ten minutes of the police pumping the chest of the supine young man and blowing down a tube into his mouth, a paramedic arrived on the scene. A few minutes after that, an ambulance arrived from the opposite direction.

The gathered medics and police did not remove the body from the scene immediately but continued to pump the chest for a further five minutes before putting it on a stretcher, covering it up to the neck and driving it away in the ambulance.

Even then, more and more officers kept arriving at the scene and, apparently, just hanging around, until there were approximately twenty five in uniform and untold numbers in plainclothes. With the arrival of each new set of officers, we pleaded our case to be released but they kept on saying that we were potential witnesses. We were prevented from driving off through the flimsy cordon with threats of arrest. We offered to leave the vehicles there with them but again, our offer was met with threats of arrest for leaving the scene of a serious crime.

The victim was reported as 21 year old Garth Campbell, but from reading the cards and flowers left at the scene, he was known to his friends, his extended family, his children and their grieving mother as "Richie". Unlike Damilola, there has been very little said in the media about Richie's killing, except that it was just another "Yardie style execution". Is this because not as much mileage can be made, in terms of damage to the African community, as from the Damilola killing?

At a public meeting of the Lambeth Community Police Consultative Group on the following Tuesday night, the borough commander, who was not at the scene, refuted everything we said about his officers. He also defended the saturation of the area with idle officers as proper policing practice in the wake of previous enquiry criticism.

I can't help thinking that if the police had acted to try and save Richie's life immediately they arrived on the scene, he may have survived. It is also quite possible that he died instantly when shot. In which case the amount of pumping and blowing they did after standing around helplessly for twenty minutes, was a futile pantomime. As one officer said they must appear to be "doing the right thing after the Stephen Lawrence Enquiry report". But why should we expect the police to want to save the life of any young African man on the streets of Brixton?

Another thing I find difficult to understand is, why people who were on the scene when the police arrived were allowed to walk away - no, told to go away - without any questioning, when people like myself, my friend and the other two African motorists who were just driving past the scene long after they arrived, were virtually imprisoned for nearly two and a half hours, then finally, released without any questioning and not a single word of apology. The police are currently staging the massive three month, Lambeth wide "Operation Tippet", which they claim, is designed to reduce street crime, with Stop and Search as their main weapon. But do they really want to solve the problem of African people dying in the streets of London?

Finally, I do recognise that the experience of losing our liberty for a few hours is nothing, nothing compared to Richie losing his breath, or his children, his family and his friends losing him - permanently. I also recognise that the way we were treated by the police, is symptomatic of a society in which someone who looks like us, can be casually shot in full view of passers by, can lay dying on the ground in his own blood and be denied treatment by the police.

As far as we know, nobody has yet been charged for Richie's killing.