Months after a violent attack on a homeless man, the police are still trying to rebuild trust
‘It only takes one person to do the wrong thing and then the trust goes’
Dear readers — last week, a video of a Greater Manchester Police constable kicking and stamping on a homeless man circulated on social media. The force admits the incident was “unacceptable” and says the constable received “refresher training” on what’s expected of her, and Andy Burnham and Nazir Afzal, former chief crown prosecutor for the North West, have called for an investigation. This week, Mollie spent time with local homeless charity Two Brews to understand how the community is feeling in the aftermath.
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Months after a violent attack on a homeless man, the police are still trying to rebuild trust
By Mollie Simpson
“Excuse me,” says the police officer as he approaches the Two Brews charity’s tea and sandwich station at St Peter’s Square. “Have you seen a man, 22 years old, wearing all black clothes and blue trainers?”
Amanda Thompson, the charity’s co-founder, and Matthew Hudson, one of the volunteers, look at each other and shake their heads. It takes me a moment to notice that everyone else in the previously bustling square has backed away. “Hmmm,” the officer says, repeating the description again with a little more urgency, as if he can rewire their brains into remembering.
We ask for the missing person’s name, and the officer looks at a smudged bit of biro on his hand and reads it out. That seems to click something into place in Amanda’s head. She remembers that it’s the beginning of Ramadan, and, wondering if the missing person could be celebrating somewhere, suggests that the officer goes to visit Manchester Islamic Institute.
“Amazing,” the officer says, motioning to leave. “Thank you.”
One minute later and the station is back to normal. The table is covered in sandwiches, baguettes and soup from Pret A Manger, bottled water, flasks of tea, litres of milk, sugar, black coffee granules and cupcakes. There’s a cluster of people at the edge of the table, picking through a pile of food, debating the merits of ham and cheese vs a tuna melt. Nancy, a woman wearing a fur coat and silver rings, is grumbling that a man filled a bag for life to the brim with sandwiches. “Not fair, is it?” she says.
“Any sleeping bags?” asks a man with a low grade trim and a thick black hoodie.
“Not today, sorry pal,” Matthew says, placing a small bread roll in between two pots of soup to keep it warm.
“Ah, no trouble.”
Two Brews is a charity for people in need. It provides meals, hot drinks and essentials to rough sleepers, every weekday evening in St Ann’s Square and St Peter’s Square. Amanda and Matthew are kind and generous, able to transform the situation from an act of charity to a moment of friendship and laughter. The homeless community has grown to trust them, some of them sharing intimate details from their family lives and how they’re feeling at the moment.
Amanda tells me that helping the homeless is the kind of support service that requires a deep level of understanding between both parties — long hours of building trust and rapport.
While it’s difficult to build trust, it’s easy for trust to break down. It didn’t surprise Amanda and Matthew that most people chose to walk away and sit on the curved benches next to Manchester Central Library when the police officer approached us. Amanda has noticed occasions where a police officer has sat and chatted with a homeless person all day, and other times where officers have been inclined to help in more practical ways, such as trying to persuade rough sleepers to take up a space in temporary accommodation or contacting their friends to get them a bed for the night. But she suspects that engagement between the homeless and the police has worsened. “It only takes one person to do the wrong thing and then the trust goes,” she says.
Last week, BBC News shared footage, dated September 2023, of a police constable dragging a homeless man across St Peter’s Square in a sleeping bag and stamping on his stomach. The man, a 31-year-old refugee from Sudan, told the BBC that the incident hospitalised him. “I had a fever and in the following hours I had blood in my urine,” he said.
In public statements to the press, GMP said the incident “fell below the standard we expect” and said the constable received “refresher training” from a senior officer after the incident, but didn’t specify what this meant. Andy Burnham and Nazir Afzal, former North West chief crown prosecutor of the CPS, have called for the police’s decision-making to be reviewed and asked for a “full investigation” into the incident to determine if the constable used “unreasonable force” against the man. In GMP’s latest statement to The Mill, a spokesperson confirmed: “The Deputy Chief Constable is in the process of reviewing the case and will inform the Mayor of the outcome in due course.”
Most homelessness charities agreed this incident stood out for its extremity. The CEO of the homelessness charity Mustard Tree said it was “appalling, unacceptable and does not reflect our city”, while the homeless charity Crisis called it “degrading”. But given the power of a single incident to break down the trust between police and the homeless community, it leaves people asking a bigger question: how can this trust be rebuilt?
‘Don’t kick him, leave him alone’
Matt isn’t a stranger to conflicts with the police. He sleeps rough outside Greggs on Cross Street. I’ve occasionally said hi to Matt or bought him a pastry on my way to work, and ever since the video was published, I wanted to ask how safe he felt around the police, and whether he felt he could trust them. We sit on the floor watching the trams snake past when he tells me about his worst encounter with the police.
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