The flippant, easy answer would be... well, cops are cops. It doesn't really make a difference. Only it does. In this case, of Ricky Bishop, the fact that he was black and he died in a Brixton police cell is significant in more than one respect. We don't at this particular stage know what happened, exactly. From what little we do know (The car Ricky was in was stopped because of 'irratic' driving, and one point or another he told the police he'd been using drugs, the police themself say he came to the station voluntarily, the fact is he wasn't formally charged with anything). You could say this isn't even a custody death, or shouldn't be a custody death. Only it is, only because, as his family points out, at one point in the proceedings, he was handcuffed, and supposedly 'got free' out of his handcuffs. Lets build a hypothesis.

A young man and his friend are stopped after their driving led to police attention. The man allegedly says he took drugs earlier and doesn't feel well. It might at that point all ready be apparent that he needs hospital attention. Maybe this will become clear at the inquest, if and when held, the significant statement would have to come from the other person in the car.

(To me, its a relief the other person in the car hasn't formally or informally (media) given his side of the story as yet, my general experience with custody deaths is that if he had it would only be used against him or the case later. From this I hope to deduct that the family is getting some knowledgeable assistance, on a sour note, the experienced assistence probably comes from those who have had to deal with custody death before... as you say, its hardly the first time for something like this to happen. Back to the hypothesis:)

What happens now? Imagine if you will, a young man of the same age, but... white. Not from Brixton, but from somewhere else... from North London, from Kent...from Oxford, say. Come to visit... a club, the Living Room, the Dogstar... Same thing happens... stopped for driving, says he doesn't feel well, has taken drugs...
It's highly likely that he would never see the inside of Brixton Police Station at all, never feel the snap of the tiewrap being closed on his wrists, but that he would be taken to the hospital straight away.
But lets assume, again, that even in this situation, its all to no avail. The young man dies. What happens then? Would his mother be treated in the same offhand way? Would there be a statement before the family has officially been notified of anything? Would the young man have been injured in the face somewhere in the proceedings? I doubt it.

I think it matters more who it happened to than were it happened, all the same, this is Brixton, not, er, Telford.
The 'general impression' (from police point of view) to start of with, the tone of the interaction between police and the two lads stopped, it will all have had it's influence on the proceedings. But then.

Custody deaths in general, wherever, to whoever, whenever.

Would I write a book on custody deaths, asks Luther Blisset. In a sense, I have. The first book I wrote was a novel, fiction but it starts with a custody death grabbed straight from life, and the situation surrounding that death. There is little in my life that has influenced me and my activities in life so much as that particular death, on the 25th of Oct, 1985, when squatter Hans Kok died in cell C12 of the main police station of Amsterdam on the Elandsgracht. I won't go into all the personal repercussions, me personally is neither here nor there, but one thing that obviously came out of seeing that nightmare up so close, is that there hasn't been a custody death that I have since learned, read, heard about in my vicinity where I couldn't help having a closer look. A horrible obsession. Usually its like its the same case over and over again, different actors, players, pathology results, locations, same reactions, botched covers up, grief turning into amazement turning into anger turning into hopelessness from relatives, involvement of people out to use the case to their own (polical) advantage, etc.etc.etc. It's led to a sort of ' Model of Parallells' for me. What happens when someone dies in a (police) cell?
The first general observation to relate what be what I call the Illogical Carpet Law of Custody Death.
The Carpet Law is such: The more potentially explosive the custody death is (f.i. death occured in all ready aggravated community, high-risk circumstances, etc. or the 'more innocent' the victim , fi not arrested during bank robbery, but while asking directions) the more will be swept under the carpet in the first instances (O-my-god-he's-died-this'll-mean-riots-look-lets-stick-together-you-never-saw-me-thump-him-right?) and the more stupid the cover-ups will be. There comes a point in the investigation of every custody death that those involved will say: But if there's nothing (big) to hide, why did they cover anything (small stuff, like,f.i, someone receiving a blanket in the cell or not) up in the first place? Why didn't they save themselves the problem of (justified) accusations later, be open and straight and above board so they'd have no problems later on? And above all, don't they ever learn? Ah, the anwer to that is: But it does pay to cover up in the first instances, because confusion bides time. Time in which Those Smarter Than Those Involved can cook the story into how it should have been, not how it was. And initial confusion, and with it initial assumptions, will set the tone effectively for the rest of the process.

Another question is: Why don't officers involved get suspended right away? Wouldn't that, at least be a gesture to the family that things are being taken seriously? But that is not the idea authorities, in these cases, like to give off at all. Because if they do, it would probably be seen as an admission to something having gone wrong, and importantly, suspension affects the morale of the policemen involved into possible inquests and investigations to come.

Really, it's all very obvious what I'm saying. Only apparently its not so obvious that it doesn't happen all over again all the time. As I said before, I suspect the Bishop family will get proper assistance from those who've dealt with this kind of stuff before. In this case the authorities probably won't get away with the things you see in so many custody death cases. But on the whole, that still happens far to often. And it might happen here, because without interest from those outside of the case, there is little anyone can do to resolve what happened.
Most, if not all, parents are aghast at their child dying in police, prison or institution custody. Even if the child was a hard criminal, a junkie, a schizophrenic, even when death comes as no great surpise, the normal shock of death is still there and many's the time that shock has been put to good use by the authorities. In the circumstances of a custody death, the impact is double: Their child was, at that particular moment, not in the street or their own bed, but under the care (custody!!) and responsibility of the authorities. Even if someone is generally responsible for their own actions, custody means that responsibility is handed over. Once in a cell, all you can do is press that button and hope someone answers it. If no-one does, or your requests are met by a kick in the gut or a visit to isolation, everything that happens next, is outside of the responsibiltiy of that child. Only the parents will be gently coaxed away from that certainty really quickly.
An immediate appeal to their 'reasonabilty', to their sense of shame which might all ready have been there, the reminder that they apparently couldn't handle their own child or he wouldn't have been in that position... every appeal to the parents psyche will be generally used to divert them from looking into the matter of what happened.
This also applies to cases where neither child nor parent has ever had anything to do with the police before. The parents will probably be ashamed that such a thing happened in the first place, will trust the authorities and will be convinced that the best thing is to believe what they're told and to handle things accordingly.
Often this leads to great feelings of regret later on, when nagging doubts prevail.
'You don't want riots by all sorts of riffraff in your sons name do you?' Remarks like that will have its impact on those numbed by the initial impact of finding their child dead in the cell. So they're advised to quickly bury, or better still, cremate their child. By all means, an autopsy will be held. But once they, by shortcomings in the official reading of the circumstances and by rumours about What Happened Really seeping out, are revived into wanting some independant research (second opinion autopsy, not the vague A4 handed them by an unnamed police coroner) it'll be too late... So anything after that is speculation and speculation only.
Usually the mistakes made by the police that lead, directly or indirectly, to an inmates death are stupid and circumstantial. Family and friends might call it 'murder', but it hardly ever is. But the stupid and circumstantial mistakes made usually have their roots in assumptions about the prisoner based on, say, appearance.

Someone dies in the cell of a brain haemmorage: He was found walking into lampposts in the street, or lying in an alleyway, and officers assumed he was drunk, threw him in the cell and left him to die. Officers involved try to rid themselves of blame by saying they couldn't possibly have known. But then another prisoner pipes up to his lawyer: He remembers this bloke, he spent some time in a holding tank, or in the van with him. The bloke kept saying he hadn't been drinking, according to the other prisoner, that he didn't know what was happening to him, that he was on his way to the shops, to his girlfriend. The lawyer relays this information to the family involved. Prisoner is questioned. Did he think this the deceased was drunk or not? The other prisoner shrugs, unsure. He ain't a doctor, is he? They shoulda given him a doctor, bloke was shouting for one, wasn't he?
Why didn't they believe the deceased when he persevered to tell them, with a thick tongue, standing unstably at the counter, that he hadn't been drinking and that he wanted medical attention? The officers cannot bring themselves to admit it was because the person in question was messily dressed, wore a Special Brew T-shirt. They wish the other prisoner had never turned up. Their superiors understand. They have to make so many asessments, this is really a very unfortunate misunderstanding. And thus the fact that what actually happened in the cells was that when the deceased rang the bell for the fourth time, an officer stormed into the cell telling him to shut the fuck up, pissed up twat, and when the deceased fell against him, he felt attacked and felt it nessecary to bang him into the wall, therefore causing a second massive heammorage, will be overlooked forever. Some things are just to painful to know. The parents think they want to know, they tell themselves, but they don't really. We'll save them the hurt. The only consolation offered, generally, is the lame promise that this will never happen again. Precautions will be taken. Until the next time. Anywhere, anytime. Any place.

Why a lengthy essay like this? Because all that can be done is to bear in mind, and keep bearing in mind, that 'custody' means full responsibility over another person. And its up to us to make sure that responsibility is not only taken, but realised: before anything happens, preferably and when things go horribly wrong.
Custody deaths have a very very vivid core that stretches into everyday life and politics. And that is, that taking someone's freedom (bodily) away from them is not something to think of lightly. Ever.

Natasha