Internet anger after former police brutality victim found dead in her cell
- Published
The PC who assaulted Ms Reed in 2012 was later dismissed from the Met
In 2012, Sarah Reed was the victim of an assault by a police officer. Her death in a prison cell last month has prompted a surge of online grief and anger, driven by black British Twitter users.
Sarah Reed, 30, lived a life punctuated by tragic events. Her newborn baby died in 2003, and she suffered from mental health problems and drug addiction. In November 2012, she was arrested, and ultimately convicted, for shoplifting in Regent Street in London. A CCTV video showed her being kicked, punched and being pinned to the ground by Metropolitan Police PC James Kiddie, 46. He was found guilty of common assault, given 150 hours of community service and dismissed from the force.
But it's more recent events that have sent her name trending as a hashtag - with nearly 7,000 Twitter messages in the past 24 hours. On 11 January, she was found unresponsive in her cell in HM Holloway Prison. "Prison staff attempted CPR, but she was pronounced dead shortly after," according to a Ministry of Justice statement. "As with all deaths in custody, the independent Prisons and Probation Ombudsman will conduct an investigation".
The circumstances are not yet clear. However that hasn't stopped a wave of tweets, driven mainly by prominent black rights activists. Lee Jasper, a British race relations activist and former Director of Policing and Equalities in the Greater London Authority, published a report on his blog last night, in an attempt to "help get the truth get out there". He's a prominent voice on the "Black Lives Matter" hashtag which has sought to highlight police violence in the US.
The biggest voices under the "Sarah Reed" tag include George the Poet, rapper and spoken word artist, who commented that the mainstream media were ignoring the case, and Sam Asumadu, film-maker and founder of Writers of Colour, who said "don't look away".
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