Vol. 76/No. 43      November 26, 2012

The group includes relatives and friends of those who died in custody of cops or officers in prisons or psychiatric hospitals. The march included family members of those killed in at least 18 cases.

Demonstrators carried a coffin whose surface was covered with names of those who died at the hands of cops. At 10 Downing Street, the official residence of British Prime Minister David Cameron, they delivered a letter demanding full disclosure of information withheld from victim’s families and unrestricted access to legal aid, which is currently means-tested.

“We are here to demonstrate to the government that we are not going away. As long as you have police officers killing our loved ones, we will be in your face until it stops,” Rupert Sylvester told the Militant. His son, Roger Sylvester, died in January 1999 after being restrained by officers in a padded room at a psychiatric hospital.

“The government is protecting the police officers responsible for the deaths of our relatives. The police should be working on our behalf—they are not the law, but they get away with murder year after year,” said Janet Alder, sister of Christopher Alder, a former black soldier who died April 1, 1998, after being left handcuffed and unconscious on the floor of a police station with officers standing by and reportedly making monkey noises.

Dawn Spiller, mother of Billy Spiller, who died in Aylesbury prison last year and suffered from autism, said authorities should “stop putting people with health problems in prisons.”

According to Inquest, an organization that its website says gathers information “on contentious deaths and their investigation,” 1,439 people died following contact with the police in England and Wales since 1990. Since 1969 no cop has been convicted for deaths in custody.

Meanwhile, a September report by an independent panel investigating what the media here call the “Hillsborough disaster” found that it was caused by a “failure in police control.”

On April 15, 1989, cops herded football supporters from Liverpool into an overcrowded stand at the Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield, England, crushing 96 of them to death against the fences. Police tampered with the evidence, amending 164 police statements and removing 116 negative comments about their conduct. Prime Minister Cameron was forced to apologize in parliament for the government’s and cops’ coverup.

Sheila Coleman of the Hillsborough Justice Campaign told BBC Radio 4 that criminal charges should be brought “because all the evidence today shows that South Yorkshire police … lied and operated a coverup.”

Paul Davies contributed to this article.  
 
 
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