from Birmingham Post
15th December 2009

A Birmingham man who died in police custody should not have been taken to a police station in a van, police conceded before an inquest jury.

Father-of-three Michael Powell was restrained by several officers after smashing windows at his mother’s home in Wilton Street, Lozells, and attacking a police car. He was conscious at the time he was bundled into a police van and taken to the cells at Thornhill Road police station. But on his arrival officers became increasingly concerned that he had no pulse, had saliva foaming from his mouth and his body was limp.

He was rushed to the A&E department at City Hospital where, despite the best efforts of doctors, he was pronounced dead minutes after his arrival.

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from Birmingham Mail
11th December 2009

A dramatic emergency phone call of police requesting an ambulance for a 38-year-old Birmingham man who died after being arrested has been played to inquest jurors.

A female officer was heard to describe father-of-three Michael Powell in the recording as “unconscious” having earlier been “uncooperative” and “going mad”. He had been arrested by police in a violent struggle in which he was sprayed with CS gas outside his mother, Clarissa Powell’s home in Lozells, in September 2003.

Mr Powell was then taken to Thornhill Road Police Station, in Handsworth, where the officer calls for paramedics. Mr Powell, who police claimed to have believed could have been armed with a gun, died after being arrested.

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all credits: Paul Suart The Free Library
9th December 2009

A Birmingham father-of-three who died in police custody was suspected of carrying a gun because of the area he was in, police conceded.

Officers were called to Wilton Street in Lozells where Michael Powell, 38, had smashed windows at his mother’s home. Lozells was, at the time of the disturbance central to a police operation to tackle gun crime within the black community following a spate of shootings in the area.

When the first police car arrived Mr Powell, who suffered with mental health problems, ran at it with an unknown weapon and smashed a rear window. He was later restrained by a passerby and several officers, bundled into a van and taken to Thornhill Road police station where minutes later he died.

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