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Reverend Al Sharpton has called for an end to the use of stop and search in the UK, accusing the police of disproportionately targeting people from ethnically diverse backgrounds.

The US civil rights activist said he fears unless urgent reform is instituted in UK policing, Britain will see its own version of the George Floyd case.

Mr Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis in May 2020 in a killing that sparked widespread protests across the America, and the world.

Speaking on Sky News' Beth Rigby Interviews, Rev Sharpton asked: "How do you explain the disproportionate amount of citizens that are black, or people of colour, being stopped and searched to whites in this country?

"How do you explain in COVID, when everybody is locked down, people of colour, and blacks in particular, are stopped and dealt with and arrested, more than whites?"

Rev Sharpton, who has been a vocal campaigner in the US for decades, added: "There is a systemic problem, and I think the studies - the data - has shown that. That is why it is critical that we get ahead of it, and deal with it, before you end up with a George Floyd.

"Stop and search, it is inherently set up in a situation, that we found - when they called it in America 'stop-and-frisk' - that it was disproportionately done in areas where blacks and browns were. When you have a disproportionate police strategy, you must eliminate that strategy."

The reverend also highlighted the issue of police brutality in his home country, citing the recent case of Tyre Nichols - a black man who was beaten by five black police officers in the city of Memphis, Tennessee and died three days later.

Read more:Punched, kicked and tasered: Timeline of violent arrest of Tyre NicholsSixth Memphis police officer sacked over father-of-one's brutal killingTyre Nichols' mother: 'I'm not going to stop' fighting for justice

"The thing that was troubling to me about the killing of this young man, is that Tyre was beat to death by five black policemen minutes away from where Martin Luther King was killed," he said.

"Martin Luther King was in Memphis fighting for black city workers. I could argue the case they may not have even been on an elite squad if it hadn't been for Dr King.

"So, we are fighting systems as well as race, because I don't believe those black cops would have beat a white kid like that, because they knew the penalty."

'The police are not being policed'

However, Sharpton didn't view the situation in America as without hope, saying he wanted reforms to US policing at a federal level, with the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.

"I think there is the broader question of police being not policed," he said. "I think that white and black police have been infested with the same kind of power trips that 'I don't have to be held accountable'.

"Which is why the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act makes them accountable. Why does that make them accountable? Because it removes qualified immunity."

Qualified immunity in the US protects police officers and other officials from civil lawsuits except in very rare circumstances.

"If a policeman knows he can lose his property, his house, his car, for his actions, his family would say, 'wait a minute, you've got to be more careful and follow the letter of the law'. There's no skin in the game," Rev Sharpton said.

The reverend believes there is now sufficient pressure on officials in the Senate to pass the act, which failed to pass in 2021.

'Imagine if Dr King had given up'

Asked if he thought Tyre Nichols' death could be a catalyst for change in America, he said: "I believe that Tyre's death can be that. I believe the same with George Floyd, where we did get the executive order. I always have hope, no matter how bad it looks.

"You must remember when the historic March on Washington happened in 1963, when Martin Luther King made his speech 'I Have A Dream', two months later, they bombed a church in Birmingham, Alabama - 16th Street Baptist Church - and killed four little girls.

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"There's always going to be a reason to give up. But you have to keep going. Suppose that [Nelson] Mandela had given up - 27 years in jail - but South Africa ended up being a democratic one man, one vote.

"Suppose if Dr King had given up, we never would have had a Barack Obama or Kamala Harris. So every time I get discouraged, I think of people that face greater odds than we have and say if they could hold on, we can hold on.

"Victory is certain. I don't know the date or the time, but I know we will win, and I won't stop fighting."

Asked if lasting change could come in his lifetime, Reverend Al Sharpton responded: "In my lifetime, hopefully. But if not, my children, they'll say in their lifetime, or my grandchildren in their lifetime, that we won. And my dad or my granddad was part of the victory. They will not say he quit and gave up."

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US civil rights leader Al Sharpton calls for an end to stop and search ...

The Rev Al Sharpton has warned that racially charged incidents such as the brutal death of Tyre Nichols in the US will also occur in the UK without far-reaching police reforms.

On the eve of a two-day visit to the UK, the US civil rights veteran said that systemic racism and a culture of policing that produces brutality must be addressed.

Nichols, a 29-year-old father and black man, died in hospital three days after being pulled over and beaten by police officers in Memphis on 7 January.

Sharpton, the president of the National Action Network, who last week delivered the eulogy at Nichols funeral, called for reforms of UK policing.

The failure to address systemic racism in UK policing and the culture of policing that produces brutality against our people will only lead to more incidences like the tragedy of Tyre Nichols, he said in a statement.

His comments contrast with Suella Braverman, the home secretary, who in September said that initiatives on diversity and inclusion should not take precedence over common-sense policing.

A damning UN report last month found that the government has failed to address structural, institutional and systemic racism against people of African descent in Britain.

We have serious concerns about impunity and the failure to address racial disparities in the criminal justice system, deaths in police custody, joint enterprise convictions and the dehumanising nature of the stop and (strip) search, the UN working group said in a statement.

Sharpton will expand on his comments on Monday when he begins his UK visit. He is expected to address Nichols death and the parallels of allegations against the police in the UK.

It follows demands for justice from the families of Chris Kaba, who was shot in the head in Streatham, south London, after a car pursuit in September, and Oladeji Omishore, who died after being after being shot with a Taser weapon on Chelsea Bridge and then being pulled from the River Thames.

The IOPC is conducting a criminal investigation into the officer who discharged their firearm which led to Kabas death.

The IOPC is also conducting an investigation into Omishores death but do not consider that a more thorough conduct investigation is required.

Sharpton will also raise police searches of black children after the outcry over Child Q, the 15-year-old girl who was strip-searched at school by female police officers while on her period.

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Nichols, who had been pulled over after an alleged minor traffic violation, was pepper-sprayed, stunned with a Taser and beaten by five black officers who took turns to hold him up for others to attack him. Footage of the incident was released on 27 January and led to unrest across several US cities.

Sharpton, who has been at the forefront of the US civil rights movement since 1991, used Nichols funeral to condemn the officers for being a disgrace to their race before adding that the officers would not have attacked a white man in the same way.

You know you couldnt get away with doing that in Tennessee to a white guy. Youll find out you aint getting away with it doing it to a black guy, he said.

Sharpton, who is attending an event by Operation Black Vote on Monday, is also expected to address electoral rights in the UK amid fears that new laws requiring photo ID at polling stations will disfranchise black and Asian voters.

Lord Simon Woolley, the founder of OBV and a mentee of Sharpton, said: The Revd Al Sharpton is coming to the UK at a critical time when simply acknowledging systemic race inequality is proving difficult.

Continued here:
Al Sharpton warns UK could suffer US-style police brutality without ...

Over the last two decades, the Rev. Al Sharpton has become the leading eulogist for Black victims of police violence.

On Wednesday, he is speaking at the funeral of Tyre Nichols, who died three days after a Jan. 7 traffic stop that turned into a brutal assault by five officers who have been charged with second-degree murder.

It is a familiar position for Mr. Sharpton. He has delivered remarks at the funerals of George Floyd, whose 2020 death in Minneapolis sparked national protests; Daunte Wright, who was shot by a police officer during a traffic stop outside Minneapolis in 2021; Eric Garner, whose dying words on a New York City street, I cant breathe, became a national rallying cry; Alton Sterling, who was shot by the police in Baton Rouge, La., in 2016; and much older cases, including the 1997 death of William J. Whitfield, an unarmed man shot on Christmas Day in Brooklyn.

Mr. Sharpton is eulogizing Mr. Nichols at the Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis, a few miles from the Mason Temple, where, 55 years ago, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his searingMountaintop speechin support of striking Black sanitation workers the day before he was assassinated.

It was at the Mason Temple on Tuesday night thatMr. Sharpton, surrounded by clergy leaders, relatives and supporters crowding the pulpit, spoke about thecontinued struggle against police violence. With images of Mr. Nicholss brutalized body behind him, framed with the words I Am a Man a slogan the striking workers used more than a half-century ago Mr. Sharpton invoked Dr. Kings, speech, in which he said he had been to the mountaintop and seen the promised land.

We wanted to bring this family, the night before the funeral, the night before Dr. King was killed, where he spoke and theyre standing on that ground because we will continue, in Tyres name, to head up to Martins mountaintop, Mr. Sharpton said.

Mr. Sharpton alsodirectly addressed the officers who assaulted Mr. Nichols.

When you can beat a man, chase him down and beat him some more, and then let him lay there wounded for over 20 minutes, and think nothing would happen, you thought that no one would respond, you thought no one would care, Mr. Sharpton said on Tuesday. Well, tomorrow, the vice president of the United States is coming to his funeral. And people are coming from all over the world. And were coming because were all Tyre now. Were all going to stand up with this family. They will never, ever recover from the loss.

Criminal justice reform has long been at the center of Mr. Sharptons activism, including protests in the wake of the brutal attack on Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant who was tortured inside a Brooklyn precinct station in 1997. Mr. Sharptons National Action Network, founded in 1991, has pushed against racial profiling, stop-and-frisk policing and other law enforcement approaches that are often decried as racist.

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Al Sharpton Again Stands at the Pulpit After a Death Involving the ...

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Rev. Al Sharpton gave the eulogy at the funeral for Tyre Nichols. Sharpton thanked the families of others killed at the hands of police brutality for being there. Nichols died following a brutal police assault in Memphis on Jan. 7.Feb. 1, 2023

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Watch full Rev. Al Sharpton eulogy at Tyre Nichols funeral

In his eulogy for Tyre Nichols on Wednesday, the Rev. Al Sharpton singled out the five Black Memphis police officers indicted for their roles in Nichols's death.

Noting that the alleged crimes took place not far from the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered on April 4, 1968, while waging a protest campaign to try to ensure the safety of Black workers in the city, Sharpton drew a line connecting the legacy of the slain civil rights hero to the killing of Nichols.

The reason why, Mr. and Mrs. Wells [Nicholss stepfather and mother], what happened to Tyre is so personal to me is that five Black men that wouldnt have had a job in the police department, would not ever be thought of to be in an elite squad in the city that Dr. King lost his life, not far away from that balcony, you beat a brother to death, Sharpton said in his address.

The Rev. Al Sharpton delivers the eulogy at the funeral service for Tyre Nichols in Memphis on Wednesday. (Andrew Nelles/The Tennessean via AP)

"There's nothing more insulting and offensive to those of us that fight to open doors that you walk through those doors and act like the folks we had to fight for to get you through them doors," Sharpton added. "You didnt get on the police department by yourself. The police chief didnt get there by herself. People had to march and go to jail, and some lost their lives to open the doors for you, and how dare you act like that sacrifice was for nothing!

Sharptons remarks come amid a debate about whether Nicholss killing should be seen as another example of racism against Black Americans given that Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Justin Smith, Emmitt Martin III and Desmond Mills Jr., the officers indicted for second-degree murder, aggravated assault and two charges of aggravated kidnapping, are all also Black.

On Tuesday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., noted that the city is Democrat-controlled and the five officers that have been arrested and charged are Black. And I think that this isnt an issue of racism or anything like that.

Sharpton's speech, by contrast, singled out the behavior of the officers and framed it in the larger context of racial relations in the U.S.

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The funeral of Tyre Nichols at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis. (Andrew Nelles/The Tennessean via AP)

The tape speaks for itself. They never asked this man for his license. Never asked for the car registration. Snatched him out of the car and began beating him, Sharpton said. Nobody mentioned nothing about no girlfriend. Nobody mentioned nothing about they started beating an unarmed man.

In the city that they slayed the dreamer, he continued, what has happened to the dream? In the city where the dreamer lay down and shed his blood, you have the unmitigated gall to beat your brother, chase him down and beat him some more, call for backup and they take 20 minutes, and you watch him and you are too busy talking among each other, no empathy, no concern.

As with the protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, many Americans have demanded that Nicholss death push the country to embark on systemic changes in law enforcement. Sharpton clearly shares that wish, but he took pains to highlight the behavior of the officers who have been charged.

We understand that there are concerns about public safety. We understand that there are needs to deal with crime, but you dont fight crime by becoming criminals yourself. You dont stand up to thugs in the street [by] becoming thugs yourself. You dont fight gangs by becoming five armed men against an unarmed man. That aint the police, thats punks.

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Sharpton's message to 5 Black officers accused of killing Tyre Nichols ...