THE POLICE BILL seeks to infringe on our civil liberties, giving increased powers to police to impose conditions on protests and cultural events — and while the Bill has an impact on many groups, black and brown people already face racial profiling and disproportionate stop and search — as well as police brutality which has led to far too many deaths at the hands of the state.

These deaths devastate families who have to become campaigners in their quest for justice, like the case of Mohamud Hassan in Wales who died after being kept in custody in a police cell overnight a year ago — and like the family of Jay Abatan who was killed by racists in Brighton and who 23 years later are still fighting for justice: the killers are known but were arrested and released and there have been collective failures by Sussex police as there were in the case of Stephen Lawrence.

So being targeted by police if you are black or brown becomes far more dangerous, because you don’t know if your life will be taken — and even if you survive an arrest, the criminal justice system hands out harsher sentences. Policing and the criminal justice system are institutionally racist.