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The worst police brutality I've experienced isn't physical

man in black jacket holding smartphone
Photo by James Eades on Unsplash

The Black Lives Matter movement and viral videos of police misconduct have focussed Britain's - and the world's - attention on the police brutality sometimes faced by Black communities.

This increase in awareness is welcomed, but it misses two crucial things: other communities often feel just as targeted as Black communities, and police 'brutality' is often not physical.

Members of other minorities, including those of Middle Eastern or Muslim heritage like myself, also suffer. And the type of brutality we encounter may be dressed up in procedural propriety or thorough investigations, which feel drawn out and vindictive.

Police brutality is about much more than just kneeling on someone's neck. Sometimes speculative investigations, built on assumptions that may be coloured by someone's ethnicity or background, can last years, paralysing a victim's livelihood, family life, and mental health.

I should know, having experienced the full spectrum of incidents. I am Iraqi-British and have been proud of making Britain my home since 1980. Although I originally came here for a private British education, I have since then started a business, created British jobs, and supported British charities at home and abroad.

A years-long Kafkaesque investigation without charge is something you might associate with Iraq. Little did I know that I would be experiencing somewhat similar circumstances in London, four decades after making it my home.

It was the latest of a long list of negative experiences I've had with the police, despite being a law-abiding property investor and philanthropist.

I was once questioned by a police officer and threatened that he would 'send me back to Saddam' - an insult that cut particularly deep.

Another time during a vehicle stop by two police officers, one of the officers asked my (English) girlfriend at the time, "aren't English boys good enough for you"?

These incidents will now be infrequent because of body-worn footage, leading to increased convictions and decreased impropriety or spurious investigations.

My experience showed me that those spurious investigations could be more devastating than any stop and search, more paralysing than any taser.

For two years, I was placed under investigation but not charged. I was interrogated about everything from my finances to my personal relationships. It was insinuated that I was everything from a drug dealer, to a money launderer, to a loan shark. I felt they were trying so hard to pin anything on me in what was a fishing expedition on a truly industrial scale.

It all started with the police convincing a judge to give them a search warrant on the basis of exaggerated and unfounded claims.

I then had my house raided at 6 a.m. by a squad of five officers, which was the worst experience of my life.

I hope that in the future, judges have the capacity to really challenge and fact-check police forces when they apply for search warrants before they are permitted to invade someone's home and privacy.

That search led to my safe, where relatively small amounts of currency for a London landlord whose tenants sometimes choose to pay in cash (with appropriate documentation) were found and used as evidence of potential money laundering. This led to the police accessing, without my knowledge, years of bank statements and tax returns and seizing all my business documents and my laptop as well as my backup hard drive.

These were held for two years, despite them promising my lawyers they would return them 14 months earlier. Since I didn't have a backup, my livelihood was essentially shut down for that time.

Does it take two years to check a laptop's contents for illegal activity? I would hope not, especially since if I was a criminal, that would have been another two years during which I was free to roam the streets and go about my business.

The police eventually admitted (after four court appearances) that I was not, after all, a money launderer, and paid my costs, totaling £20,000. That, plus perhaps hundreds of hours of police and barristers' time, is the taxpayer's cost and the cost to the public safety that depends on police catching criminals, not law-abiding people they don't like the look of.

Apart from my costs, they did not compensate me for the lost earnings, to say nothing of the trauma caused to me - and most of all, my family.

This is what, months after I was cleared, hurts the most. I had to sit my daughters and explain that maybe their Dad would have to fight a court case that could end up in the media. I am sure it affected their studies, but also their sense of security and stability.

And for a good reason.

When their mother put the family home on the market, the police conducted a covert search of the house (and discrete interrogation of her) by sending an undercover officer posing as a potential buyer. I later discovered the officer was a counter-terrorism specialist.

This may have all begun because the investigation was handled by officers from Charing Cross Police Station. Officers from that station were recently investigated for corruption, including perverting the course of justice and racism. The results of the investigation are not online.

But it may also be because I am a relatively wealthy man of Middle Eastern heritage who oversees international property transactions and has raised tens of thousands of pounds for Iraqi orphans, in the hands of a certain type of police officer that may be grounds for a counter-terrorism money-laundering investigation.

As we reassess how the police deal with the public, we must look at all the affected communities differently.

Often for those of Middle Eastern and Muslim heritage like myself, it is not about 'brutality' in the conventional sense - but can be even more destructive to our lives. For their part, the police have rejected a definition of Islamophobia proposed by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims and do not even release stats on arrests involving Middle Eastern people, making us invisible.

Ordeals like the one I went through may not go viral, but they should prompt soul-searching nevertheless. No one has ever knelt on my neck, but I felt suffocated for two years, and sometimes still do.

Women founders continue to come up against common challenges and biases

Written by Kelly Devine, Division President UK & Ireland, Mastercard

Starting a business may have historically been perceived as a man’s game, but this couldn’t be further from reality. Research shows women are actually more likely than men to actively choose to start their own business – often motivated by the desire to be their own boss or to have a better work-life balance and spend more time with their family.

The recently published Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurship 2021 found that in the category of 'Aspiration Driven Entrepreneurship’ – capturing those who actively choose to start their own business – women in the UK surpass men: 60% vs 56%. And Mastercard research from February 2022 found 10% of female business owners started their business in the past two years compared to 6% of men – meaning women were 67% more likely to have started a business during the pandemic.

Yet, there are common challenges that women founders continue to come up against - not least the gender imbalance in the household and long-held biases which are still prevalent.

In the UK, women are almost three times more likely to be balancing care and home commitments than men, and this was exacerbated during the pandemic as the additional barriers of school closures and lockdowns meant that the care time of dependents rose significantly on a day-to-day level for women. In addition, women were less likely to have access to a home office, greatly impacting the work they were able to accomplish when working from home was the only option.

It's also widely known that female business owners are still more likely to struggle to access funding for their business ideas. According to Dealroom, all-women founding teams received just 1.4% of the €23.7bn invested into UK start-ups in 2021, while all-male leadership teams have taken almost 90% of the available capital.

Without financial support, and when juggling significant time pressures both at home and at work, how can women grow their companies and #BreaktheBias (as this year’s International Women’s Day termed it)? What tools or support can save them time and money, and give them the headspace they need to focus on building their business?

With female owned businesses collectively estimating revenue growth of £120 billion over the next five years, solving this problem is bigger than supporting women – it’s about supporting the national economy.

Using tech to level the playing field

There are clearly societal issues at play that need to be resolved. But when we look at the rise in technology businesses during the pandemic, we can plainly see an alternative source of support critical for business growth: digital tools.

A third of female business owners say new technologies will be crucial to the success of their business in the future and one in five say it is the most important thing for business growth.

With new technology comes new ways to pay, create, and work. And yet there are barriers that prevent business owners accessing this technology. Women are significantly more likely to say they want to use more digital tools but don’t know what is best for their business and also more concerned about the security of digital tools.

When technology is adopted by businesses – whether using online accounting solutions or messenger services for communicating with staff – it saves them time, allows them to maintain and grow their customer base, and ultimately increases cost savings and profit.

By drastically improving the training and support that is available to women-owned business to access and utilise technology we will allow these businesses to grow and succeed. And we know there is demand for it.

Research done by the IFC and Dalberg shows that female entrepreneurs are more likely to invest time and money in business development. This includes product development, customer base expansion, and digital tools and training and there are plenty of services available offering this type of support – many of them for free.

One such programme is Strive UK – an initiative of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth – which aims to reach 650,000 micro and small business owners across the UK and empower them with the tools they need to thrive in the digital economy through free guidance, helpful tools and one-to-one mentoring.

Working together with small business experts – Enterprise Nation, Be the Business and Digital Boost – we hope to ensure hundreds of thousands of UK female business owners have the tools they need to succeed and reach their ambitious goals. Because this ambition remains strong in the UK, with female business owners largely optimistic about the future despite the multitude of challenges they are facing. Four in ten say they will grow their business in the next five years – compared to only a third of male business owners – and they’re also 35% less likely than men to say they plan to downsize or close the business.

But if we do not empower female entrepreneurs to access the tools and technology they need to grow, there is a risk this optimism could be misplaced. Support programmes that provide business owners with guidance and mentorship can help ensure this isn’t the case, allowing female entrepreneurs to not only survive but thrive in the months and years ahead.