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26/7/05
7:49 pm
Page 72
Drum: IN FOCUS
“We were open game. We felt under siege, like an endangered species. I didn’t
feel I could trust a policeman.”
walked into the hospital’s waiting room. Logan looks
into the far off distance as he remembers his father’s
beating at the hands of two corrupt London officers.
A disagreement about where the then 21-year old
Logan’s father was parking his long-distance lorry,
resulted in his lying in the Whittington Hospital,
“beaten black and blue”, after allegedly trying to
resist arrest.
Two months later Logan joined the police force.
Whilst physical retribution raged in his mind, the
young biology graduate and research technician
sought the counsel of Gretel, his Nigerian/ Austrian
fiancée (now wife). She advised him the best way to
beat them was to join them. It took more than
lateral thinking to explain to his
father that his son was now
joining the ‘racist cops’ who had
beaten him up. Growing up in
London in the 1970s and 80s,
like thousands of black youths,
the ‘sus’ laws cast a long, dark shadow over Logan’s
everyday activities.
Going down to his favourite record shop in Finsbury
Park would mean a game of ‘hide and seek’ with the
local bobby on the beat who had the right to lock
up anyone who looked ‘suspicious’. The Police and
Criminal Evidence Act of 1984 means that officers
now have to have ‘reasonable’ grounds for stopping
a member of the public, but for Leroy and other
black youths, the situation encroached on their daily
lives. “We were open game. We felt under siege, like
an endangered species. I didn’t feel I could trust a
policeman. Even though I was not doing anything
wrong I still felt if I saw a policeman
it was best not to draw any
attention to myself. I would
cross the road just to avoid
them sometimes. As black
youths we