“They were like savages,” says Sinead Foley, 37, who was strip searched by police in Birmingham in November last year.
She is among several viewers who have contacted Sky News with allegations of abuse in custody by different police forces, following our investigation into Greater Manchester Police.
Sinead was arrested and later released without charge but left with traumatic memories of her time in custody.
Using a subject access request, she has obtained some of the CCTV of her time in the cell, which shows her being undressed on the floor by female officers.
“It just felt like they could violate me, and they’re allowed to do it,” she said.
“You can see I’m compliant, so there’s no need to be dragging people’s clothes off forcibly. It’s totally inhumane.”
Sky News has not seen all the footage and Sinead acknowledges she indicated suicidal thoughts – but says she was then stripped again and left naked for 16 hours without anti-rip garments.
Image: CCTV of Sinead Foley in custody
At one point male officers are clearly in the cell with her when she is naked – the door is shut, and she is left alone with just a mattress on the floor which she says she later pulled over herself.
“They only left the blue mat in the room, that’s the only thing. So, to try and cover my modesty… I just felt totally violated.”
West Midlands Police told Sky News that no offences were committed by officers.
The force added: “Officers and staff became increasingly concerned for her welfare and took a number of steps to ensure her safety while she was in custody.
“It became necessary to arrange medical attention and to remove her clothing due to concerns for her safety and mental health.
“She was given blankets and water, but custody staff were unable to provide her with food and replacement clothing initially due to her aggressive behaviour and risk to cause herself harm.”
Sinead disputes that she was too aggressive to give clothes to, and asked the police for further footage to be provided of the period she was left naked in the cell.
West Midlands Police told us. “By the time a request for further footage of her sleeping overnight had been received, it had been automatically deleted from force systems, in line with our data retention policy which ensures personal data is not kept for longer than necessary.”
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1:25
Mayor responds to Sky’s report on strip searches
Earlier this week Sky News revealed allegations of humiliating and unnecessary strip searches conducted by Greater Manchester Police, with one woman claiming she had been raped in custody. The city’s mayor, Andy Burnham, has said he will launch an independent investigation.
He told Sky News: “People watching this programme will rightly want to know that they will be fully, properly and independently investigated. And I can give people that assurance today.
“And that’s important for two reasons. Obviously, for the individuals concerned, they will want to be assured that every single point that they’ve raised will be properly investigated. But, secondly, it’s important with regard to women’s competence in policing and under, of course, policing in Greater Manchester.”
The former victims commissioner, Vera Baird, said one concern is women being punished for complaining about the police.
She said: “We are all very well aware that there are often sceptical approaches to women, that sometimes women feel that they are the ones on trial and the notion that therefore you might have to press a little hard to get the police to take some notice of you suddenly opens up this new vista that you may yourself then, at its very early stage, become arrested and treated badly because you are behaving in a nuisance way, as it were, to the police.”
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9:09
Are women safe in custody?
After seeing images of Zayna Iman being stripped in custody, a number of Sky News viewers got in touch with their own allegations of abuse by other police forces, with several saying their complaints were ignored.
Quotes from emails include: “I was a victim of a crime and detained naked in a cell overnight in the freezing cold.”
Another reads: “The CCTV of me pinned naked on my back in a cell by four/five officers then pepper sprayed is ‘not available’.”
Another said: “I struggle with the memories of what happened to me. The officer who assaulted me was sadistic, he got off on having that power over me.”
Maggie Oliver, whose foundation has helped provide support to some of the women we have spoken to, said: “This for me is an abuse of power. It’s power in the wrong hands, which means that they believe that they are unaccountable.
“And that is not what a police force or a police service is. They are public servants. And they should be responding when there are allegations of this nature.”
Greater Manchester police said it had found no evidence of officer misconduct in the cases raised, but has referred itself to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).
Deputy Chief Constable Terry Woods said: “I want to make it absolutely clear that we understand and share the concerns of the public regarding allegations against Greater Manchester Police… Miss Iman’s allegations regarding her treatment in custody, in February 2021, are subject to an ongoing investigation.
“The force made a referral to the IOPC which instructed a GMP-led investigation.
“Having reviewed the content of the television report which highlights additional concerns, I have taken the decision to make another referral to the IOPC in order to assure Miss Iman and the public that all of her allegations will be rigorously and independently reviewed.”
You know bad economic news is looming when a Chancellor of the Exchequer tries to get their retaliation in first.
Treasury guidance on Tuesday afternoon that Rachel Reeves has prioritised easing the cost of living had to be seen in the light of inflation figures, published this morning, and widely expected to rise above 4% for the first time since the aftermath of the energy crisis.
In that context the fact consumer price inflation in September remained level at 3.8% counts as qualified good news for the Treasury, if not consumers.
The figure remains almost double the Bank of England target of 2%, the rate when Labour took office, but economists at the Bank and beyond do expect this month to mark the peak of this inflationary cycle.
That’s largely because the impact of higher energy prices last year will drop out of calculations next month.
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5:27
Inflation sticks at 3.8%
The small surprise to the upside has also improved the chances of an interest rate cut before the end of the year, with markets almost fully pricing expectations of a reduction to 3.75% by December, though rate-setters may hold off at their next meeting early next month.
September’s figure also sets the uplift in benefits from next April so this figure may improve the internal Treasury forecast, but at more than double the rate a year ago it will still add billions to the bill due in the new year.
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10:13
Minister ‘not happy with inflation’
For consumers there was good news and bad, and no comfort at all from the knowledge that they face the highest price increases in Europe.
Fuel prices rose but there was welcome relief from the rate of food inflation, which fell to 4.5% from 5.1% in August, still well above the headline rate and an unavoidable cost increase for every household.
The chancellor will convene a meeting of cabinet ministers on Thursday to discuss ways to ease the cost of living and has signalled that cutting energy bills is a priority.
The easiest lever for her to pull is to cut the VAT rate on gas and electricity from 5% to zero, which would reduce average bills by around £80 but cost £2.5bn.
More fundamental reform of energy prices, which remain the second-highest in Europe for domestic bill payers and the highest for industrial users, may be required to bring down inflation fast and stimulate growth.
Schools need to be “brave enough” to talk about knives, Sky News has been told, as the killer of Sheffield teenager Harvey Willgoose is sentenced today.
His killer, who was also 15 and cannot be identified for legal reasons, had brought a 13cm hunting knife into school.
Image: Harvey Willgoose. Pic: Sophie Willgoose
Following Harvey’s murder, his parents Caroline and Mark Willgoose told Sky News they wanted to see knife arches in “all secondary schools and colleges”.
“It’s 100% a conversation, I think, that we need to be empowered and brave enough to have,” says Katie Crook, associate vice principal of Penistone Grammar School.
The school, which teaches 2,000 pupils, is just a few miles away from where Harvey was killed.
After being contacted by the Willgoose family, it has decided to install a knife arch.
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The arch – essentially a walk-through metal detector – has been described as a “reassuring tool” and “real success” by school leaders.
“We’re really lucky here that we don’t have a knife crime problem – but we are on the forefront with safeguarding initiatives,” says Mrs Crook.
“I didn’t really think we needed one at first,” says Izzy, 14. “But then I guess at Harvey’s school they wouldn’t think that either and then it did actually happen.”
Joe, 15, says he did find the knife arch “intimidating” at first.
“But after using it a couple of times,” he says, “it’s just like walking through a doorway”.
“And it’s that extra layer of, like, you feel secure in school.”
After Harvey’s death, then home secretary Yvette Cooper said that she would support schools in the use of knife arches.
But there remains no official government policy or national guidance on their use.
Some headteachers who spoke with Sky News feel knife arches aren’t the answer – saying the issue required a societal approach.
Others said knife arches themselves were a significant expense to schools.
But Mrs Crook says they are “well worth the funding” if they prevent “a student making a catastrophic decision”.
“I’m a parent and, of course, my focus every day is keeping our students safe, just as I want my son to be kept safe in his setting and his school.”
Mrs Crook says she thinks schools would “welcome” a discussion at “national level” about the use of knife arches and other knife-related deterrents in schools.
“It’s sad, though that this is what it’s come to, that we’re having lockdown drills in the UK, in our school settings.
“But I suppose some might argue that has been needed for a long time.”
If you eat beef, and ever stop to wonder where and how it’s produced, Jonathan Chapman’s farm in the Chiltern Hills west of London is what you might imagine.
A small native herd, eating only the pasture beneath their hooves in a meadow fringed by beech trees, their leaves turning to match the copper coats of the Ruby Red Devons, selected for slaughter only after fattening naturally during a contented if short existence.
But this bucolic scene belies the turmoil in the beef market, where herds are shrinking, costs are rising, and even the promise of the highest prices in years, driven by the steepest price increase of any foodstuff, is not enough to tempt many farmers to invest.
For centuries, a symbolic staple of the British lunch table, beef now tells us a story about spiralling inflation and structural decline in agriculture.
Mr Chapman has been raising beef for just over a decade. A former champion eventing rider with a livery yard near Chalfont St Giles, the main challenge when he shifted his attention from horses to cows was that prices were too low.
“Ten years ago, the deadweight carcass price for beef was £3.60 a kilo. We might clear £60 a head of cattle,” he says. “The only way we could make the sums add up was to process and sell the meat ourselves.”
Processing a carcass doubles the revenue, from around £2,000 at today’s prices to £4,000. That insight saw his farm sprout a butchery and farm shop under the Native Beef brand. Today, they process two animals a week and sell or store every cut on site, from fillet to dripping.
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Today, farmgate prices are nearly double what they were in 2015 at £6.50 a kilo, down slightly from the April peak of almost £7, but still up around 25% in a year.
For consumers that has made paying more than £5 for a pack of mince the norm. For farmers, rising prices reflect rising costs, long-term trends, and structural changes to the subsidy regime since Brexit.
“Supply and demand is the short answer,” says Mr Chapman.
“Cow numbers have been falling roughly 3% a year for the last decade, probably in this country. Since Brexit, there is virtually no direct support for food in this country. Well over 50% of the beef supply would have come from the dairy herd, but that’s been reducing because farmers just couldn’t make money.”
Political, environmental and economic forces
Beef farmers also face the same costs of trading as every other business. The rise in employers’ national insurance and the minimum wage have increased labour costs, and energy prices remain above the long-term average.
Then there is the weather, the inescapable variable in agriculture that this year delivered a historically dry summer, leaving pastures dormant, reducing hay and silage yields and forcing up feed costs.
Native Beef is not immune to these forces. Mr Chapman has reduced his suckler herd from 110 to 90, culling older cows to reduce costs this winter. If repeated nationally, the full impact of that reduction will only be fully clear in three years’ time, when fewer calves will reach maturity for sale, potentially keeping prices high.
That lag demonstrates one of the challenges in bringing prices down.
Basic economics says high prices ought to provide an opportunity and prompt increased supply, but there is no quick fix. Calves take nine months to gestate and another 20 to 24 months to reach maturity, and without certainty about price, there is greater risk.
There is another long-term issue weighing on farmers of all kinds: inheritance tax. The ending of the exemption for agriculture, announced in the last budget and due to be imposed from next April, has undermined confidence.
Neil Shand of the National Beef Association cites farmers who are spending what available capital they have on expensive life insurance to protect their estates, rather than expanding their herds.
“The farmgate price is such that we should be in an environment that we should be in a great place to expand, there is a market there that wants the product,” he says. “But the inheritance tax challenge has made everyone terrified to invest in something that will be more heavily taxed in the future.”
While some of the issues are domestic, the UK is not alone.
Beef prices are rising in the US and Europe too, but that is small consolation to the consumer, and none at all to the cow.