Met Police officers served with misconduct notices over child strip-search
Exclusive: The IOPC began investigating this case May 2022 amid a number of referrals following the strip search of Child Q
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Your support makes all the difference.Four Metropolitan Police officers are being investigated by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) over the strip-search of a mixed-race child.
A police sergeant and three constables have been served notices in relation to the arrest and detention of the child, who was strip-searched by officers.
The IOPC began investigating the matter in May 2022 amid a number of referrals it received following the Child Q scandal.
“We can confirm that four Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) officers have been served misconduct notices as part of our ongoing investigation,” an IOPC spokesperson said.
“A police sergeant and three police constables have been served notices in relation to the arrest and detention of the child, who was strip-searched by MPS officers. The serving of misconduct notices does not necessarily mean disciplinary proceedings will follow.” The watchdog is looking at the arrest and detention of the child, not the strip search itself, the spokesperson added.
Figures obtained from Scotland Yard by the Children’s Commissioner in August showed 650 children underwent “intrusive and traumatising” strip searches under stop and search powers by the Met between 2018 and 2020, with Black boys disproportionately targeted.
On Monday, it emerged that one thousand police officers are operating in schools across the UK, with the Runnymede Trust charity warning of a “deeply concerning” and “normalised” police presence.
Some 979 police officers - known as Safer Schools Officers or SSOs - are based in schools, according to a Freedom of Information request to 45 police forces by the charity.
However, this information has fuelled concerns that police presence in schools threatens to “criminalise” and “traumatise” young Black people.
It follows the case of Child Q, a 15-year-old girl who was strip-searched by officers while on her period in 2020, after being wrongly suspected of carrying cannabis at school.
The search, by female Met Police officers, took place at her school without another adult present and in the knowledge that she was menstruating, a safeguarding review conducted by City & Hackney Safeguarding Children Partnership found.
The review further concluded the strip search was unjustified and racism “was likely to have been an influencing factor”.
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