Film about police custody deaths at Hackney's Rio cinema

Broadcasters refused to air the 2001 film Injustice, which the police union branded defamatory and an incitement to riot.  

The filmmakers investigated deaths after police contact in Brixton, Clapham, Hackney, Newham and Tottenham. 

Police lawyers have used legal threats to shut down past cinema screenings, but a rare showing on April 29 will be followed by a Q&A with relatives of some alleged victims.

Director Ken Fero will be joined by a relative of Aseta Simms, who was found dead in Stoke Newington police station in 1972 with head injuries consistent with having been beaten.

The family of Vincent Graham will also attend. Police claimed Mr Graham stabbed himself to death by accident in Kings Cross in July 1989, but a witness said they saw a gang of police officers punching and kicking him as he screamed for help.

Other deaths examined in the film are those of Hackney’s Shiji Lapite and Harry Stanley, and Tottenham’s Roger Sylvester and Joy Gardner.

In 1995, Channel 4 screened director Ken’s film Justice For Joy, about how 40-year-old Crouch End mum Joy Gardner died after police wrapped 13 feet of adhesive tape around her head.

“When that went out, we had a lot of complaints from the police and public saying it was biased and anti-police,” he said.

It was working on that film which inspired his follow-up, Injustice.

Injustice director Ken Fero holds a megaphone for Janet Alder, whose brother Christopher died in a Hull police station. An inquest jury ruled his death an unlawful killing, but a crown court judge threw out the resulting criminal charges (Image: Migrant Media)

“Nobody had done any systematic analysis of deaths in custody,” said Ken. “The state and the media weren’t really tracking it the way they should have been. No journalist had even counted the number of people killed.”

Injustice, released in 2001, gave the figure as over 1,000. The film generated even more controversy than Justice for Joy.

“We released it without any input from the police,” said Ken. “We wrote to them to get their point of view, but they never even bothered to come back to us.”

However, when it hit cinemas, the Police Federation waged war against it.

According to the British Film Institute (BFI), the premiere at the Metro, Piccadilly, was abandoned 20 minutes in, after the federation’s lawyers faxed a legal threat.

“We actually named and showed the police officers accused,” said Ken. “The reaction of the police was to threaten the Metro cinema with legal action.

“The Metro pulled the screening. The federation kept threatening cinemas and they all kept pulling it.”

The filmmakers started holding secret screenings in schools, pubs and community centres.

“In the end, we told the police that if they didn’t stop threatening the cinemas, we would take them to court for loss of earnings,” said Ken.

After that, the legal threats stopped. He believed it was because they didn’t want the deaths covered by the film to be examined in a courtroom.

“We could have asked the questions that had never been asked in a criminal court,” Ken claimed.

The Police Federation declined to comment for this story.

But even after the legal threats subsided, said Ken, Channel 4 and the BBC refused to screen Injustice – despite the film winning distribution deals internationally and picking up several awards.

Campaigning Hackney lawyer Raju Bhatt appears in the film. He represented the family of Shiji Lapite, who died from numerous injuries, including a fractured voice box, after being stopped by Stoke Newington officers for acting suspiciously (Image: Charles Thomson)

“It was broadcast in the USA and Australia, but not in the UK,” Ken said.

Channel 4 said at the time that its lawyers felt it couldn’t be shown “without attracting indefensible libel claims”. But Ken called UK broadcasters’ refusals to air it “cowardly”, saying it meant the film was effectively "banned".

“After George Floyd’s murder, we went back to Channel 4,” Ken alleged. “A commissioning editor watched it and said they wanted to show it and felt the time was now right.”

But weeks later, said Ken, he was told the station still wouldn’t show it after all.

Neither Channel 4 nor the BBC provided any on-the-record comment for this story.

For Ken, public screenings are preferable anyway.

“The cinema events are about mobilising people,” he said. “People can come and hear from the families and find out what’s happened since.”

The April 29 screening is part of the Hackney Art Activism Festival, which also includes a comedy night with Nish Kumar at the Rich Mix cinema in Bethnal Green.

Tickets for Injustice cost £11.50 from the Rio’s website.