Commander Kevin Southworth speaking about the Child Q misconduct hearing

Evening Standard

Commander Kevin Southworth speaking at New Scotland Yard about the Child Q misconduct hearing.Two Metropolitan Police officers committed gross misconduct during the “disproportionate” and “humiliating” strip search of a 15-year-old black girl at school, who was wrongly suspected of carrying cannabis.The girl, known as Child Q, was strip searched while she was on her period, by officers in Hackney, east London, on December 3 2020, after her school wrongly suspected her of carrying cannabis.

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00:00I think we should start by offering our sincerest and deepest apologies again to

00:04Child Q for what happened that day and also to her family, her friends, the

00:09community and everyone affected by this terrible incident. We understand the

00:13distress it was caused within the community and beyond Child Q herself

00:17and hopefully we can reassure people that we've transformed our approach to

00:20stop and search since this time in order to make sure that something like this

00:23never happens again. We've introduced additional layers of authority for

00:29searches of this nature in the future so it has to be an inspector from the local

00:32team who authorises such searches going forward and also make sure that we have

00:36increased oversight of them so every single search of this nature is reviewed

00:39afterwards for any learning and ultimately this has led to a significant reduction in

00:44the number of these searches so they've gone down by 38 percent in the last year

00:48and I'm pleased to say that in two out of three of those searches of this nature a

00:53criminal item of some description or a crime has been revealed which means that

00:59in two out of three instances at least these searches are making the public safer.

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