Ricky Bishop was a passenger in a friend’s car, driving through the back streets of Brixton, London on a Thursday afternoon, 22 November, 2001. For reasons that have never become clear, police decided he was suspicious (being a young black male seems often to be a good enough reason, and the fact he was in a car with a white man may have added to their concerns) and decided to stop the car and take the two along to Brixton Police Station for questioning.
Four hours later, a healthy young 25 year old black man was dead. Bishop’s family and friends allege he was assaulted by police, and that they held him down and failed to giv e medical assistance when he had a heart attack. The inquest seems largely to have served to lay bare inconsistencies in the police account, and the jury were denied the opportunity of bringing in a verdict that would have blamed the police for his death – as is also happening in the current case of Jean Charles de Menezes.
His family and many members of the community want to see justice done, not just in this case but in many others. At the anniversary march in Brixton this year, two other men were also remembered, Derek Bennett, shot in the back by police as he held a novelty gun-shaped cigarette lighter in Brixton in 2001, and Sean Rigg, who died after being taken ill in police custody in Brixton Police Station on Thursday 21 August 2008.
You can see more about the march and rally outside Brixton Police Station on My London Diary. Elsewhere on Current TV there is also a short video by Jason Parkinson which includes much of Ruth Kimathi’s statement about the Bishop case.