Two police officers who were involved in the strip-search of a black teenager at her school have been dismissed after they were found to have committed gross misconduct.
The search at a school in Hackney, east London, was “disproportionate, inappropriate and unnecessary” and made the girl, known as Child Q, feel degraded and humiliated, a panel concluded at the end of a four-week misconduct hearing.
But the panel, chaired by a senior police commander, found that race was not a factor in the police officers’ decision to subject the 15-year-old to the search in December 2020, and nor was it found that she was treated as an adult. A third officer was found to have committed a lesser offence of misconduct.
In a statement supplied by her solicitor, the girl said afterwards: “I can’t go a single day without wanting to scream, shout, cry or just give up. I don’t know if I’m going to feel normal again, but I do know this can’t happen to anyone, ever again.”
Outrage over the schoolgirl’s treatment led to protests by hundreds outside a town hall and a police station after a safeguarding review revealed details of the incident.
Amid suspicions on the part of school staff that she smelled of cannabis after arriving for a mock exam, she was taken to the medical room to be strip-searched while teachers remained outside. No cannabis was ever found.
The search, which was carried out without her mother being informed, involved the removal of her clothing including her underwear and her bending over. She was menstruating at the time and had told officers but they still proceeded with the search.
The three officers, trainee detective constable Kristina Linge, PC Victoria Wray and PC Rafal Szmydynski, had all denied gross misconduct.
Allegations of gross misconduct were found by the panel to have been proved in the case of Szmydynski – whom the panel said had taken a leading role throughout the interactions with school staff and Child Q, although he was not in the room for the search – and Linge, who was a PC at the time. Both were dismissed.
The panel, chaired by the Met commander Jason Prins, also found they had failed to ensure that an appropriate adult was present during the search, failed to obtain senior officer authorisation and failed to provide the child with a copy of the search record. They also did not respect her rights as a child.
Announcing the panel’s decision, Prins said that the actions of the police officers involved had done “enormous harm” to Child Q and significant harm to trust in the police, as well as being a breach of professional standards. The only appropriate outcome was dismissal without notice, he added.
Wray was found to have been in a “fundamentally different position” and engaged in misconduct but her failure to challenge or question colleagues did not satisfy the threshold for gross misconduct. She received a final written warning.
In a rare move, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) had instructed the lawyers presenting the case against the police officers and had put forward the case that race and lack of accountability were at the heart of why and how the teenager was strip-searched.
However, while the panel found that the incident was “a disastrous and negative interaction” between police and a black teenager, they concluded race had not been the reason Child Q was treated so badly.
The search was “disproportionate, inappropriate and unnecessary”, and it was “humiliating” for the child and made her feel “degraded”.
Child Q’s mother said in a statement: “Professionals wrongly treated my daughter as an adult and as a criminal and she is a changed person as a result.
“Was it because of her skin? Her hair? Why her? After waiting more than four years I have come every day to the gross misconduct hearing for answers and, although I am relieved that two of the officers were fired, I believe that the Metropolitan Police still has a huge amount of work to do if they are to win back the confidence of Black Londoners.”
Carolynn Gallwey, Child Q’s solicitor, said the family hoped the case might be a “turning point in how police treat black children in particular”, but added: “The statistics time and again show that black Londoners are disproportionately targeted by street-level policing powers but in this case the panel rejected those statistics as unreliable. It is, however, their job to produce reliable data and to act on what it shows, and that remains to be done.”
Elliot Gold, for the IOPC, told the panel on Thursday that the consequences of the incident had been to do damage and “real harm” to the relationship between the police and black communities.
He added that other harms had been caused in respect of the ability and willingness of schools to seek help from the police, and to Child Q herself, who had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Amanda Rowe, an IOPC director, said the incident had had a “significant and long-lasting impact” on the wellbeing of Child Q, who was now a young woman.
She said: “This case also led to widespread public concern, and we have heard directly from a range of community stakeholders about the impact that this incident has had on trust and confidence in policing.”
On the back of its investigation, the IOPC has made recommendations to the Home Office to amend strip-search laws to improve child safeguarding measures, including introducing a mandatory safeguarding referral for any child subject to a search exposing intimate parts.
Reacting to the panel’s findings, the Met commander Kevin Southworth said what happened to Child Q “should never have happened and was truly regrettable”.
He said: “While the officers involved did not act correctly, we acknowledge there were organisational failings. Training to our officers around strip-search and the type of search carried out on Child Q was inadequate, and our oversight of the power was also severely lacking.
“This left officers, often young in service or junior in rank, making difficult decisions in complex situations with little information, support or clear resources to help their decision-making.”
