Community protest as Police lose CCTV evidence of
unprovoked racist attack in Willesden - Report from Robin Sivapalan
At 5.20am on Sunday 9th June, 5 white
men pulled up in a black luxury car near Willesden Bus Garage on the High Road
and attacked two young men of African descent, who had just got off a bus from
central London.
One managed to avoid being punched in the face and
was separated from the other, who was punched to the ground and kicked
repeatedly.
Three witnesses across the road shouted out and ran
across to his defence; the men got into their car and drove off shouting. The victim
was taken by the police to hospital with bruises under his eyes and later had a
broken tooth removed. One of the
witnesses, Robin Sivapalan, a local trade unionist met him later at Northwick
Park hospital and brought him to his house to recover.
On chasing up the incident later that day with
police at Wembley, Robin was informed that the case had not yet been allocated
to an investigating officer, nor had it been logged as a racist attack. He
stressed to the police officer that the assault could well have been far more
damaging had there not been an intervention from the public, that the attackers
posed a threat to all Black people - not just the particular victim in this
case - and that this was possible backlash to the Woolwich incident.
Robin and the victim went to a local business where
they were shown the CCTV footage which caught the entire attack, with the car,
from two cameras and they informed the police that the evidence was available.
It took till Thursday for the police to call the
victim, and the investigating officer failed to reply to any of the messages
left by Robin. By the following Thursday the CCTV footage had been lost. The
police had been told that they were welcome to collect the recording equipment
themselves while the footage was still retrievable.
The police attended the business on Wednesday 19th
and discovered one set of footage had been deleted. They only collected the
recording equipment and called in witnesses after DS Williams had been informed
by Robin that the second set of footage had also been lost and that he would
take the matter further. On Tuesday 25th June the police issued an
appeal for witnesses via the Kilburn Times providing the wrong time and
location of the assault, with no mention that it was a racist attack.
The case has been brought to the attention of Aslam
Choudry, Brent Council’s Lead member for Crime Prevention and Public Safety,
also a councillor for Dudden Hill where the incident took place. He has raised
it with the police Borough Commander Matthew Gardner and the Council Leader,
Muhammad Butt.
Local residents in Brent are holding a picket at
Wembley Police Station, 7pm, Thursday 27th June, calling for meeting
with the Borough Commander that will provide accountability for this failure to
act. A spokesperson for the residents says: “We don’t believe this is an
isolated incident of hate crime in the area. At Brent Council’s commemoration
of Lee Rigby, the Borough Commander proudly informed us that there had been no
recorded incidents following Woolwich, yet we can see here how the police fail
to treat these attacks as hate crimes and are happy to lose the evidence when
it handed to them on a plate. With a spike in Islamophobic and racist attacks
around the country, it is shocking that in a Borough where the majority of us
could face such an attack, the police can display such complacency and
disregard for our concerns. This is exactly the form of institutional racism
that is in the media again this week, with the discovery of the police’s
attempts to smear Stephen Lawrence’s family”.
