The public inquiry into the death in police custody of Sheku Bayoh, which starts taking evidence this week, must be a “watershed moment” with the potential to prompt a wider dialogue about racism in Scotland, campaigners have said.
The hearings begin almost exactly seven years since the father-of-two died after being restrained by officers in Kirkcaldy, Fife, on 3 May 2015, and marks the first major public examination of institutional racism in Scotland since the Black Lives Matter movement galvanised around the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
Bayoh died after police officers responded to reports of a black man in an agitated state carrying a knife. He was hit with batons, CS spray and pepper spray, then restrained on the pavement with wrist and leg ties. A postmortem documented 23 separate injuries to his body. A toxicology report confirmed that Bayoh had taken some drugs that night, but no bladed weapon was found.
The nine officers involved, some of whom have since left the police, have always denied any wrongdoing and have not been prosecuted or disciplined for any aspect of his death.
Intense pressure from Bayoh’s family, including his partner, Collette Bell, and his sister, Kadi Johnson, finally persuaded the Scottish government to announce an independent inquiry in 2019, which began gathering and reviewing tens of thousands of pieces of documentary evidence a year later.
The family’s faith in the criminal justice system has been “destroyed” over the past seven years, said their solicitor, Aamer Anwar.
“They believe that Sheku Bayoh was systematically criminalised and smeared in order to justify his death, and they are expecting a lot more of these attacks during the inquiry, as seems to happen whenever a black man dies in custody in the US or the UK,” said Anwar.
In a move that he and the family described as “bitterly disappointing”, the inquiry chair, Lord Bracadale, asked Police Scotland and the Crown Office in March to provide undertakings the officers would not be prosecuted for individual evidence they gave his inquiry, to ensure “full, frank and uninhibited” testimony, but this request was refused.
The Bayoh family have since warned that it would undermine the spirit of the inquiry if police officers resorted to “no comment” answers.
Bracadale, a retired appeal court judge, previously promised an “inquisitorial” inquiry that would reinvestigate the entire case, focusing on the lead-up to police confronting Bayoh, their conduct after his death, the subsequent investigations by the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner and the Crown Office, and whether racism was a factor.
The first of these five blocks of evidential hearings will take place in Edinburgh from Tuesday, and members of the public can attend in person or watch them broadcast on the inquiry YouTube channel.
Deborah Coles, the executive director of Inquest, which has supported the Bayoh family from the outset, said the inquiry “must be a watershed moment for Scotland in examining issues around institutional racism, police restraint practices and the flawed systems for responding to deaths”.
She said it was “highly significant” that race was specifically in the terms of reference, “because that is often the elephant in the room” with such deaths.
Coles noted that Tuesday’s hearing would open with a family statement. “It is important this is opening with pen portraits, which were used really well in the Grenfell and Hillsborough inquiries. It humanises the process and reminds everybody that a black man, much loved by his family, died at the hands of the state and that this needs to be properly examined.”
Hannah Lavery, the poet and playwright whose best-known work Lament for Sheku Bayoh was first performed at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2019, will attend a vigil for Sheku Bayoh in Edinburgh on Tuesday morning.
“Many people have said that Sheku was our George Floyd, and his name alongside George’s was evoked many times during the Black Lives Matter protests in Scotland in 2020,” Lavery said.
“Now is the time for those who were moved to show support then to stand by Sheku’s family and friends now. They have fought so hard for this inquiry, that long struggle needs to be honoured by us all. They need to know that they are not alone”.
“Whether this inquiry marks the beginning of change in Scotland, whether it reaches the front pages and provokes a wider dialogue about racism, we don’t yet know – but it has the potential to be a reckoning, a moment to reflect on Scottish exceptionalism and the lives that are destroyed by this ‘nae problem here’ rhetoric.”
