link to photo
U.K. - Nzube Udezue a recent computer science graduate of Oxford University was mistakenly arrested and held at gunpoint by Dorset police as he was leaving a train at a UK station.
According to a Guardian article "The Independent Police Complaints Commission said yesterday that it deemed the actions of Dorset police "appropriate and proportionate to the circumstances." This story sounds like it could have happened in Brooklyn or Los Angeles.
A London Times article stated "Mr Udezue lives in Bournemouth with his father, Emmanuel, an eminent doctor and fellow of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, and his mother, Chika, a journalist." Nzube already has a job lined up with Accenture, a consulting company.
Udezue is also a fairly well known performer in Saudi Arabia (where he lived most of his life) and in the UK. He has already posted a detailed narrative of his experience on his blog. Hopefully he will put this experience into his lyrics for his next song.
Below is his most recent video.
-----
The Times - London
July 9, 2008
Stop-and-search victim Nzube Udezue relives his gunpoint ordeal
Richard Ford and Patrick Foster
Police stopped people on the streets almost 1.9 million times last year to ask them to account for their movements – and black people were more than twice as likely to have been stopped than whites.
The figures were released as the innocent Oxford graduate who was pictured in The Times yesterday being stopped at gunpoint by police at Bournemouth station said that he was “shocked, confused, scared and embarrassed” by the incident.
Writing on his blog, Nzube Udezue, 21, said: “When I woke up this Saturday morning, I could happily say that I’d managed to get through (almost) 22 years of my life without any real incident with the police. I could also say that I’d never had a gun pointed at me. Little did I know that by 6.10pm I’d be lying face down on the ground, handcuffed, with several sub-machine-guns pointed at me.”
The computer science graduate, a budding musician whose rap video is being screened on satellite television, said that he had spent the day in Southampton promoting his music. “[At] 5.24pm, I hop on to the train back to Bournemouth, looking forward to a hardcore gym session. 6.09pm, the train pulls into Bournemouth station and all hell is about to break loose. The next 30 seconds was like a blur.”
Armed officers shouted at him to “get down”. He said: “It took me a couple of seconds to realise that it was me that all those guns were aimed at. Are they seriously talking to me? I honestly felt like I’d stepped off the train and into a really bad dream.”
Mr Udezue, who will join Accenture, the consultancy, next month, said he was told to lie down and put his hands out. “I oblige. I’m shocked, confused, scared and embarrassed all at the same time,” he wrote. “Most of the bystanders have vacated the platform by now, by police order. And I’m not talking about normal police either. This is the Specialist Firearms Unit, about eight of them, machineguns, bulletproof vests, police dogs and all.”
He added: “It appears that someone whose description I matched (a black male wearing a dark T-shirt with bright orange writing) was involved in an altercation in Basingstoke and had threatened someone with a handgun...
for link to complete London Times article click here
No comments:
Post a Comment