London(UK)- London’s under-fire police force strip-searched more than 600 children over two years, most of them black boys, according to new data released Monday.
England’s commissioner for children, Rachel de Souza, said she was “deeply shocked” by the figures after obtaining them from the Metropolitan police.
De Souza’s request came after Britain’s biggest police force was forced to apologise in March over the case of “Child Q”, which sparked an investigation into four officers’ gross misconduct.
Female officers strip-searched the 15-year-old black schoolgirl in 2020 after being wrongly suspected of carrying cannabis, despite them being aware she was menstruating.
She was searched without an “appropriate adult” present, and neither was an adult in attendance in 23 percent of the cases unearthed by de Souza.
She found Met officers between 2018 and 2020 strip-searched 650 minors aged 10-17.
More than 95 percent were boys, and the officer described 58 percent of the 650 as black.
De Souza said she was “extremely concerned” at the ethnic imbalance and said Child Q might be part of a bigger “systemic problem around child protection” in the Met.
She said the figures had gone up sharply year after year and showed that many children “are being subjected to this intrusive and traumatising practice each year”.
The London force has been rocked in recent years by a succession of incidents involving officers, including last year, when a diplomatic protection squad member was jailed for the kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard.
A crisis of public confidence in the police saw Cressida Dick resign as Met commissioner in February.
In response to de Souza’s findings, the Met had already instituted changes “to ensure children subject to intrusive searches are dealt with appropriately and respectfully”.
It conceded that some children might be “vulnerable victims of exploitation” by gangsters and drug criminals.
London mayor Sadiq Khan redoubled his criticism of the Met after slamming the force over the Child Q case and other incidents.
A spokesman for Khan said it was “deeply concerning” that so many body searches were happening without an adult present.
“And there remain wider issues about disproportionality and the use of stop and search on young black boys,” the spokesman said.