Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340
- 357)
TUESDAY 19 DECEMBER 2006
CURTIS BURK,
CEAN JOHNSON
AND ANDREW
PORTER
Q340 Ms Buck: Is it something you
talk about?
Andrew: On a day-to-day basis
in a way, you talk to your friends who it has happened to. It
has not really happened recently.
Q341 Ms Buck: What do you think about?
I mean, if you were sitting down talking to someone who had been,
you know, not you as individuals but talking to someone who had
been a victim, someone like one of your mums.
Curtis: What, someone had robbed
her or something?
Q342 Ms Buck: A mugging or something
like that.
Curtis: I do not really look for
them.
Cean: I go out looking for revenge.
Q343 Ms Buck: It would not make you
think, "God, this is so awful we have just got to stop all
this"?
Andrew: Stop all what?
Q344 Ms Buck: What you are describing
to me is this kind of cycle, that it happens, it is bad, so either
I am going to look for revenge or next time I am going to be tougher.
Curtis: That is me. That does
not mean I am just going to go out there with a knife and stab
him when I see him by himself or get a gun and shoot him. That
means I am just going to beat him up with my fists until he cannot
get back up, if he wanted to rob my mum.
Andrew: When it comes to family,
obviously, it gets deeper. Really, if I walked out of here and
got robbed while I am walking down the street I would not go and
rob someone else just because I had been robbed just to make me
feel like it. If I got robbed I got robbed, there is nothing I
can do about it. I would probably go and tell the police, or if
you know the person but you cannot do nothing, I would probably
go and get someone who can do something and sort them out or something
like that. I would not really go out and start on the next individual
for no reason. If someone pulled a knife I am not going to draw
one next time.
Q345 Ms Buck: What I am trying to
get at is what makes people stop? We have talked a little bit
about YIP and I think we have probably covered some of the things
about school and opportunities and that being a way out. Does
it ever make people stop, to be confronted with someone who has
been a victim, who has been really traumatised or really damaged
by being a victim of crime, someone who looks like your mum or
someone who looks like you? Does that work or are you not able
to get that yet?
Andrew: It probably works for
some people, say, if you gave me a real good story and then I
am there, like, feeling sorry for you or stuff like that, and
then you do change your ways and if you go out and do that, or
if people just sit there and I listen to what you say I can probably
interact but that probably don't change nothing. In a way you
are, like, wasting time that you are not really changing it for
anybody. Some people you might get through to them but other people
you will not.
Curtis: It is just people that
are cold-hearted that you have got to get through to.
Andrew: Not cold-hearted. You
just do not convince them.
Q346 Mrs Dean: What do you think
could improve relations between young people and the police, and
could you tell us a bit about your experiences with the police?
What could young people and what could the police do?
Andrew: No-one likes the police.
It is not because you do crime and when you do something wrong
they come and interrupt it. It is the fact that, if you do do
something wrong and you get caught, it happens. This is when you
are minding your business, you are not doing nothing, and then
they come up with some false claim, like, searching for a reason,
like you fit a description, or something stupid like they start
to bug you about wasting time on your own and that is the reason
why they know you, and then when you do something wrong they do
not really show any—not mercy but they do not show—
Curtis: Not mercy, but no sympathy.
Andrew: And they are not really
polite. They do not come up front with respect straightaway. Straightaway,
"You did it". They do not go, "Yeah, that seems
good". They just come up front, "You did it", because
they think you did it.
Q347 Mrs Dean: Do they stop you because
they know you or do they stop you because you are a young black
person?
Andrew: They probably stop me
not because I am a young black person but because, I mean, I am
in a dress code. I am in a dress code for someone who will go
out and start fights and so on. I am in a dress code so, "Yeah,
it could be him". That is what I am saying.
Q348 Mrs Dean: Because of what you
are wearing?
Andrew: Yes, it is in a way what
you are wearing, or it could be because they know you or it could
be because you are black or white or Asian or whatever.
Q349 Mrs Dean: How can we improve
that then? How can we stop this cycle of, I suppose, mistrust
really?
Curtis: To start with, I have
got friends that have stuck up for their mum because their mum
has been getting arrested and they have arrested him himself,
beat him up in the back of the car, and then took him to the police
station and then because he said, "I have got a couple of
bruises", they just slammed him in the cell and did not say
nothing about it. I know friends that get vicious. It is like,
even when you are not doing nothing they rack you up when you
are not doing nothing and slam you on the wall because they just
love to do it.
Andrew: You get some who will
beat people up, you get some, yeah, junior copper.
Q350 Chairman: I understand about
stopping and searching but what you are saying is about the police
assaulting people. That is quite a serious thing. Is that common
or just something that happens very occasionally?
Curtis: I have heard it a few
times. It is common, actually. I get stopped and searched most
of the time.
Andrew: I do not really get stopped
that much. Actually, I do but it is not really for me in a way.
It is, like, if I am with someone and they stop both of us and
ask us or search us or they might search him or me or both of
us. It is common and sometimes you have a break and other times
they see you and just, "Oi, oi", like, say, you are
walking up the road and they just follow you.
Q351 Mrs Dean: Do you know of anybody
that that happened to make complaints about the police?
Andrew: You cannot. I do not think
you can do it. I do not think you can go down to the police station
and say, "One of that guy's colleagues—", and
they will say, "Yeah", and they say, "No, no, no,
PC—", or, "He assaulted me". "Oh yeah,
really?" Even if they did pass it along nothing would really
happen. You cannot really fight these lot.
Q352 Mrs Dean: Do you know any black
police officers?
Andrew: I do not know any police
officers.
Q353 Mrs Dean: So you would not fancy
becoming a police officer?
Andrew: It is not what I was feeling
anyway. It is not that I am ever likely to become a police officer.
It is not what I want to be.
Q354 Mrs Cryer: Thinking about the
three of you and all of your friends, of those who have been involved
in any way with the police, courts, prison, whatever, and those
who have never had any contact at all with any of those agencies,
which are the ones who are most likely to commit a crime? Is it
the ones who have already been involved and have had experiences
with the police, or those who have had no experience at all?
Curtis: No experience at all sometimes.
That is it, "I want to do this and I want to do that. I want
to start doing burglaries, I want to start earning some money",
and stuff like that.
Q355 Mrs Cryer: So those who have
not had any of these experiences, they still think it might be
very glamorous to do it?
Curtis: Yeah, and some people
think, "Oh, no, that is not what I want to do. I want to
get an education", and stuff like that.
Andrew: It is not glamorous. Say
someone is always in trouble with the police, so you do it and
they did not get that much harder punishment last time, so they
do it again. People who never really got in trouble with the police,
they would be doing it because they are thinking, "I need
the money", or, "I need to get this here", plus,
"It is a first offence and I will not be going to prison
or nothing. I will just be doing what I am doing, so yeah, I can
do it".
Q356 Mrs Cryer: Cean, do you want
to say anything?
Cean: I think it is the ones that
have been involved with the police and been to prison. They are
more likely to go out to re-offend.
Q357 Mrs Cryer: So you do not think
prison deters people?
Curtis: It depends, because it
could stop people from doing it. It depends what a bad experience
they have had inside.
Andrew: Unless they know other
people so it makes it feel like home.
Curtis: I know a lot of people
that have come out of prison and they go back in before Christmas,
and then they come back out and they just go back in again. You
know why? It is like a second home to them. They have got a lot
of friends there as well. If they went to a prison that was a
living hell they would not want to go back. It is because all
their friends are there from the same area that it seems like
a home for them.
Chairman: Thanks a lot. That has been
really helpful to us. We are really grateful to you for coming
all the way down here today. We hope you have enjoyed it yourselves
and found it useful. We have certainly found it very useful indeed.
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