Mum whose home was raided due to son’s toy gun calls for racial equality at protest
Kai Agyepong, 12, was left ‘terrified’ after armed officers raided his home in Camden and arrested him because of the toy gun.
A mother whose home was raided after someone saw her son, 12, playing with a toy gun told protesters: ‘It is not hunting season on black people.’
Mina Agyepong, 42, was addressing a crowd gathered outside the Metropolitan Police’s central London headquarters for a Black Lives Matter protest, which called for Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick to resign.
Commissioner Dick has been criticised by the Black Lives Matter movement for ‘failing to acknowledge’ racism in the force. She previously said the Met had transformed and described the words ‘institutionally racist’ as not a ‘useful way to describe the service’.
Ms Agyepong’s son Kai was left ‘terrified’ when armed officers with sniffer dogs raided their home in Camden, north London, in July and arrested him after someone reported seeing a ‘black male carrying a firearm’. He had been playing with a toy gun.
Speaking with a microphone, Ms Agyepong said her son had been ‘criminalised for playing with a toy in his own house’. She described the Met Police as ‘the biggest gang in London’
She went on: ‘It is not hunting season on black people. What I do know is that my son is scared and I am scared.
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‘Obviously black lives matter but not as much to the rest of the UK. We need to continue to fight. All we are asking for is equality and they are lucky that we do not want revenge.’
Ms Agyepong said she is more scared of her son being among the black people who are disproportionately stopped and searched by the police than she is of knife crime.
Uniformed officers watched from behind barriers at New Scotland Yard on Saturday as the crowd heard speeches about the struggles black people have had with the police.
Activist Stafford Scott recalled some of the people, with cases stretching back to the 1980s, who have died after coming into contact with British police, including Cynthia Jarrett, Joy Gardner and Mark Duggan.
He said: ‘Institutional racism is at play in the heart of the policy-making and decision-making that goes on inside this building today. We mustn’t think that these types of deaths have not happened in Britain before.
‘We mustn’t think we have to wait for a George Floyd to happen here today before we stand up and make a stance.’
The protest is part of a series of demonstrations that have taken place across the UK as the four officers charged over the death of George Floyd go on trial in the US.
On Friday, protestors gathered outside the US embassy in London to show that previous Black Lives Matter protests were not just a ‘moment’.
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