The BBC has been forced to issue a correction after showing a video which falsely inflated the number of people who have died in police custody in Britain.
Earlier this month activists from the protest movement Black Lives Matter (BLM) staged demonstrations in Birmingham, Nottingham and near Heathrow Airport.
This coordinated action by the anti-racism group was allegedly designed to coincide with the anniversary of the death of Mark Duggan, which sparked riots across England in 2011.
As news stories go, it required maximum sensitivity, clarity and accuracy, but after receiving complaints the BBC has admitted it was at fault.
The BBC’s coverage of these events included this report by BBC journalist Julia Macfarlane:
Macfarlane’s report featured a member of BLM saying there had been “1,562 deaths in police custody in my lifetime…”
The clear suggestion by the BLM was that 1,562 black people had died in police custody in the UK in recent years, which is presumably part of the reason why BLM believes it is a necessary force in Britain.
Yet the 1,562 figure he quoted does not relate exclusively to black people and is more complicated than it at first seems.
As the BBC noted in its clarification, the campaigning group Inquest was the first to use this figure, based on data it compiled between 1990 and 2016.
But, crucially, Inquest has specifically stated that these 1,562 deaths include those “arising from road traffic incidents, pursuit, and shootings involving the police” as well as deaths in custody.
However, in making its clarification, the BBC further confused the picture by misinterpreting the statistics it quoted.
Having consulted Inquest, it admitted the number of deaths in police custody was “1,028” rather than 1,562.
Yet there are potential problems with the 1,028 figure as well.
The BBC’s correction read:
In fact, this figure [1,562 deaths], compiled by ‘Inquest’ to cover the period from 1990 to 2016, also includes numbers arising from road traffic incidents, pursuit, and shootings involving the police. The number of deaths in police custody over this period was 1028.
Inquest’s own statistics show that the 1,028 figure quoted by the BBC is also open to question.
For example, some of the 1,028 custody deaths may have been from natural causes or suicide. Inquest has not broken down this figure so it is not possible to say how these people died.
Furthermore, the BBC has – arguably – still left readers with the impression that, because it was clarifying a report about BLM, 1,028 black people in Britain died in custody.
In fact, the 1,028 figure covers all deaths in custody – regardless of ethnicity.
Inquest actually believes that 156 black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) deaths occurred in UK police custody during or shortly after police contact between 1990 and 2016.
Of these, 145 took place in custody or following police contact. The other eleven died after being shot.
These figures are supported by the UK’s independent fact checking charity, Full Fact:
Inquest further states that 9 of these BAME deaths were found to be unlawful killings.
Surely these are the deaths over the last 26 years which Black Lives Matter UK should focus on.
What this amounts to is that the BBC was wrong to allow BLM to suggest 1,562 black people died in police custody to begin with, and wrong not to have made its correction much clearer given the context of Mark Duggan’s death.
Heat Street understands that a member of the public has written to the BBC raising this entire matter with BBC news chief James Harding.
A BBC spokesman said: “We followed our usual procedure to clarify a figure for the number of deaths in police custody given by a campaigner, after it became clear the figure also included other categories of police-related deaths. It would be misleading to suggest it was stated that these figures only related to black people when in the original news item our reporter made it clear the majority of deaths in police custody involved white people.”
