‘He’s Saying He Has Chest Pains He Can’t Breathe…Blah, Blah’: Black Man Reportedly Dies From Asthma Attack After Cops Ignore His Cry Of Distress

Outrage is brew­ing in England fol­low­ing find­ings that police were not liable for the death of a Black man, who died while in their cus­tody. The offi­cers claimed the man was lying about not being able to breathe dur­ing a fatal asth­mat­ic attack and were caught on cam­era dis­miss­ing his cries for release.

A recent­ly released study by The Independent Officer for Police Conduct high­light­ed Ian McDonald-Taylor’s death in a sum­ma­ry and excused the offi­cers that were con­nect­ed to the case of neg­li­gence or wrongdoing.

It said, “We found no indi­ca­tion that any per­son serv­ing with the police may have com­mit­ted a crim­i­nal offense or behaved in a man­ner that would jus­ti­fy the bring­ing of dis­ci­pli­nary proceedings.

The report by the watch­dog orga­ni­za­tion pub­lished at the end of August got the sto­ry wrong, some peo­ple have expressed.

Over three years ago, the 54-year-old was detained after a mas­sive fight

Officers had the man lying down on the ground on Coldharbour Lane in Brixton on June 29, 2019, with his wrists hand­cuffed. While they had him pros­trate, he is heard on police body­cam yelling out to them, “I’m fad­ing, I’m going to die.” In response to his remarks, one of the police offi­cers said his com­plaint was “a load of nonsense.”

McDonald-Taylor report­ed­ly was suf­fer­ing from acute asth­ma and died from car­diac arrest exac­er­bat­ed by the incident.

On Wednesday, Sept. 28, the same agency pub­lished its annu­al report on police-involved deaths, doc­u­ment­ing the demise of mul­ti­ple indi­vid­u­als who died dur­ing or fol­low­ing their con­tact with police over the last two years. Eleven deaths were doc­u­ment­ed in or fol­low­ing police cus­tody, the Daily Mail reports.

Some of their deaths were caught on cam­era like the death of drill rap­per Chris Kaba and Oladeji Omishore, a man suf­fer­ing from a men­tal health crisis.

The fam­i­lies of both men believe their police-involved deaths were direct­ly influ­enced by a sys­temic prej­u­dice against Black peo­ple with­in the MPD. They are cur­rent­ly work­ing with the char­i­ty Inquest to do out­reach to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to look into both men’s cases

That’s espe­cial­ly so, con­sid­er­ing their 2020 report that affirmed “police bru­tal­i­ty” and human rights vio­la­tions by law enforce­ment against Africans and peo­ple of African descent” in var­i­ous coun­tries, includ­ing the United Kingdom, high­light­ing the death of anoth­er Black Brit by the police named Kevin Clarke.

As a result of the inves­ti­ga­tion, the IOPC reopened his case and deter­mined the offi­cer used an inap­pro­pri­ate hold on him, caus­ing his death.

The fam­i­ly and sup­port­ers of McDonald-Taylor are dis­ap­point­ed the watch­dog orga­ni­za­tion did not see the fin­ger­print of racism in this death, despite the footage being available.

Bodycam footage played in the court­room cap­tured him plead­ing with the cops, say­ing, “I’m going to die; stand me up now.”

No mat­ter what he said, offi­cers dis­re­gard­ed his peti­tion. One offi­cer was heard report­ing to a sergeant that McDonald-Taylor was “cur­rent­ly on the floor play­ing the whole poor me poor me, he’s going to have to go to the hos­pi­tal though as a mat­ter of course.”

“He’s say­ing he has chest pains he can’t breathe blah blah; it’s a load of non­sense but there we go,” he erro­neous­ly mocked. In the court doc­u­ments, the officer’s name is withheld.

McDonald-Taylor repeat­ed­ly asked for relief, believ­ing with­out it he would die. However, he was nev­er extend­ed med­ical sup­port and was left in the streets with­out his inhaler.

Eventually, he was trans­port­ed to a patrol car. Moments after get­ting into the car, he had a heart attack, prompt­ing offi­cers to call an ambu­lance to the scene. Later that evening, after he was tak­en to Kings College Hospital, he died.

McDonald-Taylor’s case was brought to tri­al and a jury con­clud­ed his death was not a result of the offi­cer neglect­ing to care for him dur­ing his attack. He report­ed­ly also died as a result of car­diac arrest, acute asth­ma, COPD, sit­u­a­tion­al stress, ischemic heart dis­ease and dehydration.

The court was asked to con­sid­er a study that said offi­cers are more like­ly to think a Black per­son, over a white per­son, is fak­ing an ill­ness when being apprehended.

Police denied this could be a fac­tor, but did not deny diver­si­ty train­ing could be use­ful in com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing with peo­ple of color.

The deceased’s Michael Cooper, com­ment­ed after the tri­al, “Watching the video footage of Ian fight­ing for breath and des­per­ate­ly plead­ing for help, but being dis­missed and even mocked by police offi­cers, is utter­ly devastating.”

Cooper fur­ther ques­tioned if there was any duty of care on the offi­cers’ part.

“The police are trained to deal with sit­u­a­tions like this,” the cousin said. “Yet they did not do what any­one else would have done and dri­ve him to a hos­pi­tal that was three min­utes away.”

“No one in the UK should die from asth­ma and yet Ian did. How many more deaths will it take before the police take seri­ous­ly a Black man who says he can’t breathe?” he asked.

Another rel­a­tive, McDonald-Taylor’s aunt, Pauline Taylor, hired lawyers from Duncan Lewis to rep­re­sent the fam­i­ly as they seek justice.

She said, “ ‘ I need my inhaler…I can’t breathe…I’m dying.’ These were the last plead­ing words of my nephew. He died on the street beg­ging for help, not from just one, but sev­en police offi­cers who casu­al­ly dis­missed his pleas and even went so far as to laugh and mock him.”

She con­tin­ued, “What more could he have said in those moments to solic­it help and sim­ple humane com­pas­sion from those who are sworn to serve and pro­tect. What has been learned? One offi­cer said that he would do exact­ly the same giv­en the same set of circumstances…May God help us!”

Speaking for her fam­i­ly, she said they are all “bro­ken” because of the loss of her loved one.

“Our pain wakes us each morn­ing and steals into our dreams at night,” Taylor said.

“But in try­ing to heal we rec­og­nize that the dis­clo­sures relat­ing to Ian’s untime­ly and cru­el death can be used as a tool to bring about bet­ter train­ing, effec­tive prac­tice, holis­tic aware­ness and chal­lenge the ugly exis­tence of unbi­ased racism.”

Their pain was not unno­ticed by the IOPC, which offered con­do­lences through its region­al direc­tor Sal Naseem. However, they still believe the offi­cers were in the right.

Naseem said, “We began an inves­ti­ga­tion on 1 July 2019 fol­low­ing a manda­to­ry refer­ral from the Metropolitan Police Service. We looked at all of the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing police con­tact with Mr. Taylor, fol­low­ing a report of a dis­tur­bance in Coldharbour Lane, Brixton, SW9 on Saturday 29 June 2019 at around 5:54 p.m.”

He con­tin­ued, “We found the offi­cers pro­vid­ed appro­pri­ate care to Mr. Taylor but it was clear that the offi­cers who were with him through­out believed they could not trans­port him to hos­pi­tal in their police vehicle.”

“We drew this to the force’s atten­tion as a pos­si­ble oppor­tu­ni­ty for learn­ing giv­en in this case, which was a med­ical emer­gency, it took 36 min­utes for the ambu­lance to arrive after the offi­cers called it with­in three min­utes of their arrival and twice request­ed updates on its progress,” he added. “MPS pro­ce­dure does allow for police vehi­cles to be used to trans­port peo­ple to hos­pi­tal in excep­tion­al circumstances.”

According to the offi­cial, the research did not sup­port “bring­ing of dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings or com­mit­ted a crim­i­nal offense,” to any of the offi­cers involved.

“During our inves­ti­ga­tion, which con­clud­ed in December 2019, the police offi­cers involved with Mr. Taylor were treat­ed as wit­ness­es and pro­vid­ed state­ments to sup­port the inves­ti­ga­tion,” he said, point­ing to the sig­nif­i­cant video footage reviewed to help them come to their conclusion.

Chief super­in­ten­dent Colin Wingrove, from the Central South Basic Command Unit of the Met Police, also added, “Our thoughts remain with Ian Taylor’s fam­i­ly and friends fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion of the IOPC inves­ti­ga­tion report.”

“I would like to reit­er­ate the unre­served apol­o­gy I made to the fam­i­ly for the com­ments made by the offi­cer which lacked care, com­pas­sion, and respect when Mr. Taylor was in need of urgent med­ical assis­tance,” the chief expressed.

Wingrove said McDonald-Taylor’s death impact­ed the com­mu­ni­ty tremen­dous­ly, prompt­ing the depart­ment to make some reforms to fur­ther improve “the ser­vice” his depart­ment pro­vides “to the pub­lic, ensur­ing the high­est stan­dards whilst reduc­ing crime and keep­ing peo­ple safe.”

This includes improv­ing offi­cer train­ing and col­lab­o­rat­ing direct­ly with the com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to rebuild the trust lost over the years.