Just two weeks ago a man fell to his death from a balcony in Peckham, after police fired a Taser at him as he threatened to jump.

The dead man, not yet named, fell several floors to the ground. He was taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries, and died later the same day.

The man had clearly been in some mental distress all day; neighbours had heard him shouting about jumping from the balcony for several hours before cops arrived.

The police claim the officers spent more than an hour trying to convince the man to come down.

Tasering him in while he was in such a vulnerable condition and in such a dangerous place, was pretty typical of police responses to people with mental health problems. Restraint, arrest, violence are the trademarks of cops arriving as first responders to people in mental health crisis.

It comes less than a year after the death of Oladeji Omishore, who fell from Chelsea Bridge after being Tasered by police in June 2022.

Omishore, 41, who lived close to Chelsea Bridge in south-west London, was also experiencing a mental health crisis, and was tasered multiple times by two officers just outside his flat. He fled, jumped into the Thames and drowned.

The two officers who fired the Taser shots remain on full duty.
Oladeji Omishore’s family are taking the police watchdog to the high court in a test case, accusing them of failing to properly investigate the officers involved.

These latest death bring up painful echoes of previous deaths.

On 27 April 1994 Kwanele Siziba, a 27-year-old Zimbabwean woman, with a fractured wrist, fell 12 floors to her death in East London after trying to climb down to the flat below from a balcony.

Two police officers had knocked on the door to accompany a bailiff; Kwanele was afraid they were immigration officials, and terrified they would arrest and deport her back to Zimbabwe. This was only a few months after the death of Joy Gardner, killed while being arrested by police and immigration officers, having been targeted for deportation, and Omasase Lumumba, who died in Pentonville Prison where he was being held pending deportation.

Kwanele Siziba kept saying ‘If the police find me I don’t want to die’.

The bailiff was there to collect a debt, and admitted that he had threatened to break the door down if it was not opened. Obviously the police with him made no effort to restrain him.

The coroner delivered a verdict of misadventure, but noted, that “Ms Siziba’s fear of the immigration service caused by the deaths of Joy Gardner and Omasase Lumumba had contributed to the action she had taken and which had led to her death.”

In the same year Joseph Nnalue also fell to his death that year. Police and immigration officers, acting on a tip-off called at the apartment on the second and third floors of a block in Clapham, south London, on Sunday morning on the suspicion that Mr Nnalue had overstayed a visa.

In 1996, Noorjahan Begum fell 30 feet to her death after two immigration officers called at the flat where she was staying. They were actually looking for a male offender. Later that year, Fred Akiyemi met his death after falling from the balcony of his fifth floor flat. Peckham police were visiting his flat as part of an ‘ongoing inquiry’.

39-year-old Ghanaian Joseph Crentsil died, in November 2001, after falling from a third floor balcony of a block of flats in Streatham. The inquest jury was told how, on a Sunday afternoon, immigration and police officers called at the third-floor flat looking for a Portuguese man called Fontez Garcia. They did not find Garcia and William Addison, the man who opened the door, invited them in. The two immigration officers began questioning the people in the flat, including Joseph.

There was ‘conflicting evidence’ about where the police officers were when Joseph fell, whether Joseph was detained and whether officers had grounds to question the men in the flat. The cops claimed they had not detained him, but in fact after radioing in Joseph’s details, had been ordered not to let him or others leave, and passed that on to the other officers. The cops had broken down several doors in the flat to search rooms.
Within fifteen minutes of their arrival, Joseph was found seriously injured on the ground floor. He had climbed out of the kitchen window onto the walkway outside the flat and then over the balcony, from which he had fallen. He was taken to Kings College hospital and was pronounced dead.

None of the assorted coppers and immigration officers involved in any of these deaths faced any comeback. These are just a tiny few that followed this pattern of deaths after falls from height under pressure from police and/or immigration officials. There have been over 1700 other deaths caused by police or in custody since 1990. Many Black, many migrants, virtually none leading to charges for those who killed them. 1oos of families are still fighting for justice and accountability.

Despite the fact that the tasering of as yet unnamed man in Peckham on April 12^th 2023 has been referred to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, we expect more of the same. The lives of migrants and Black people are held very cheap.

The United Families & Friends Campaign (UFFC), is a coalition of those affected by deaths in police, prison and psychiatric custody, supports others in similar situations.