it was the death of sheku bayoh in 2015 that spurred me into action: in an attempt to add black british voices to the ongoing story of worldwide police brutality, i’ve teamed up with filmmaker troy james aidoo to create the documentary film 1500 and counting. we have been working with members of the bayoh family and organizations to put a spotlight on the criminal behaviour of officers, in an attempt to shake british people out of their current state of complacency. if we cannot trust the state to police us fairly, then we are all walking targets. time and time again, we see a similar pattern in the stories of black victims of police brutality: they are often vulnerable usually suffering from mental illness, arrested by several officers, and brute force is used to detain them.  the making of 1500 and counting led me to ask what has really changed since the 1980s—a time when skinheads ruled the streets and terrorized immigrants, and now-abolished 'sus' laws allowed police officers to profile black men and boys, searching and brutalizing them for no particular reason. although the race relations act was initially introduced to outlaw racial discrimination in the u.k. in 1965, and was extended to apply to the police in the ‘90s, not much has improved. if we examine any area of british life, we will see significant racial inequalities. the unemployment rate for ethnic minorities in the u.k. is 11.3%, more than twice that of white people 5.5%. depressingly, black people are almost three times as likely to be unemployed than anyone else in the u.k., with 38% of young black men currently unemployed compared to 17.8% of young white men. healthcare is another area where gross inequality exists: black people are 44% more likely to be detained under the mental health act than their white counterparts.  black people are more disproportionately represented in u.k. prisons than in the u.s. the proportion of black people in jail in the u.k. is almost seven times their share of the population, whereas in the u.s. the proportion of black prisoners is four times greater than their population share. and terrifyingly, police officers have used routine arrests to collect the dna profile of three-quarters of young black british men between the ages of 18 and 35.
we need to talk about police brutality in the u.k.