- guardian.co.uk, Sunday December 10 2000 17.05 GMT
- The Observer, Sunday December 10 2000
His crimes? He has sucked his teeth in an 'aggressive manner' in the presence of a police officer. He has been apprehended driving with a dirty number plate. He has been questioned for carrying a copy of The Observer .
In the last six months, the police have carried out 26 checks to see whether he was driving a stolen vehicle. In all the 37 times he has been stopped, he has never been convicted of a single crime.
Now, in a move that will confirm the fears of many in the black community that they are being targeted by the police because of the colour of their skin, an internal police report into the case of Delroy Lindo has found that the diminutive 41-year-old has been the subject of a sustained campaign of 'unwarranted police harassment'.
The report on the treatment of Lindo, a married father of three from London, is deemed so explosive that it may never be published. But The Observer has been passed details of the unprecedented inquiry, which blames senior Metropolitan Police management for failing to take 'a strategic overview' of the case.
Lindo is by no means the only member of the West Indian community to accuse police of harassment, but he is the first to have claims upheld by an internal police inquiry. It is thought that three of the attempts to prosecute him may prove to have been unlawful.
Scotland Yard finally ordered the inquiry by deputy assistant commissioner Tarique Gaffur in July, 15 years after the harassment began. It followed 28 separate complaints by Lindo about police harassment of him and his family. Gaffur short-circuited the Met's time-consuming complaints and disciplinary procedure - and found in favour of Lindo. Yet no officers will face charges or disciplinary action as a result.
David Lammy, the black London Labour MP who has been campaigning for him, said last night: 'This is a case that underlines what we in the black community have been saying for a long time: we are consistently stopped and searched. If I'm not dressed in a suit, I am stopped and harassed. It will be deeply regrettable if the findings of this report are not made public and the officers concerned brought to book.'
Lindo believes his troubles began when he became a prominent campaigner for Winston Silcott, who was accused of the murder of PC Blakelock during riots on the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham in 1985. Silcott was cleared on appeal, and last year received £50,000 for wrongful arrest and imprisonment. He is now serving a life sentence for the earlier stabbing of a young boxer, Anthony Smith.
Fed up with the police attention, in 1988 Lindo and his wife Sonia moved to Florida to avoid the harassment. They returned three years later to find nothing had changed, and the campaign continued.
On one occasion, a police officer followed the couple into their children's school and, after an argument, they were escorted off the premises in handcuffs. In December 1999, Lindo claims he was challenged by an officer as he left a newsagent's shop with a copy of The Observer , which had an exclusive interview with Silcott.
Around the same time, Lindo says he received a telephone call from his son Tyrone, telling his father he was being attacked in the street by a middle-aged white man. When he arrived at the scene, Lindo was challenged by police who asked him to hand over the keys of his car. When he refused, he was arrested and later charged with assault. In June, Highgate magistrates in north London threw out the case.
Six weeks later, Lindo was arrested again - this time, for sucking his teeth aggressively. The black community finally snapped. After pressure from Lee Jasper, race adviser to London Mayor Ken Livingstone, the police agreed to the inquiry.
Lindo says his life has been made impossible since the harassment began. His wife, a Haringey Council housing officer, has been forced to take leave from work as a result of stress, and has herself been the alleged victim of a police assault.
Deputy metropolitan commissioner Ian Blair told The Observer yesterday that the inquiry was an attempt by senior officers to break the cycle of arrests and complaints that has dogged the Lindo case. Scotland Yard hopes its swift conclusion will reassure the black community that the force is ridding itself of institutional racism in the aftermath of the Macpherson inquiry into the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence.
'We are conscious of being a post-Stephen Lawrence organisation,' said Blair. 'We are trying to learn and admit our mistakes. But we also have to be fair to officers who work in a very challenging environment.'
He said it would be impossible to discipline any of those involved because none had been given the opportunity to respond to Lindo's claims. 'This is not the vehicle for the discipline of any individual. We now need mature reflection on a complex issue.' He had no immediate plans for a further investigation.
The inquiry team studied 93 individual intelligence reports on the Lindos, involving a total of 49 officers. A number of the incidents reported involved racially derogatory comments about the family.
Gaffur said an unusually high level of correspondence between Lindo and the Police Complaints Authority had yielded no tangible result.
Delroy and Sonia Lindo want a full public inquiry, and have indicated that an apology from the police will not be enough.
Useful links
Commission for Racial Equality
Metropolitan Police
