Police DEI and anti-racism training failed Henry Nowak

This country has a long tradition of policing by consent. The police are expected to act proportionately, they are expected to assume that people are innocent until proven guilty. They are not permitted to take sides in a dispute, and they are certainly not there to handcuff people who pose no physical threat and are not resisting arrest. The police are trained to use controlled and reasonable force. There is no expectation that police should manhandle and handcuff an individual, unless it is necessary for their own protection and that of others in the vicinity.

Based on the harrowing video of Henry Nowak’s final moments, there was no evidence of the existence of any threat of resistance or violence. All that can be seen in the video is a dying man being treated appallingly. He spent his last seconds on this earth having his appeals for help dismissed, not being believed when he told officers on the scene NINE times that he could not breath, or when he told them FOUR times that he had been stabbed. He was treated as the criminal, not the victim.

And why was he treated appallingly, in this instance? Because he was white.

This is a terrible failure of policing that has its origins in racism, and in a view that people who have protected characteristics must be believed, whilst those who don't must be treated with scepticism. It comes from a woke culture of DEI, of assuming that people who are white have automatic critical race theory prejudices, and are therefore likely to be guilty of racism, whether or not this is supported by their actions.

It has been inculcated in the police by things like the McPherson report, which say that the institutions are racist. But institutions cannot be racist; institutions do not have emotions or prejudices. Individuals can be racist, and individuals make up institutions, but an institution cannot, in and of itself, be racist.

And so, we have seen in the Henry Nowak bodycam footage what is unquestionably one of the worst examples of a police failure in this country in modern times. It is akin to what happened to George Floyd in the United States of America. But instead of finding that our elected officials and senior statesmen are taking the knee, supported by prominent social personalities, sportspeople and celebrities showing solidarity by joining in, we find that instead there has been a great deal of silence.

Finally, the Prime Minister spoke on Tuesday, but up until then all he could manage was a tweet on Monday. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has said nothing. The last time round, when it was George Floyd, Starmer took the knee with Angela Rayner unflinchingly and without hesitation, whilst Sadiq Khan was one of the first to signal his outrage at the perceived racial injustice he believed he was witnessing. It is a clear case of double standards, and the problem is that it undermines all race relations.

The UK has a proud record of good and calm race relations. But what happens when race relations are abused, and when innocent people are murdered, and when the police behave in the way that they have? Race relations are damaged and are undermined. We have had historically a pretty cohesive society. We have until recent times not been akin to the USA, which has been blighted by problems with racial cohesion and controversial policing of ethnic minorities. We have been able to say boldly and loudly and clearly that all lives matter and that all are equal under the law.

What happened to Henry Nowak showed that to be more of a pious aspiration than a reality.

Whatever comes next, our institutions MUST learn from this, and in particular our police forces must change. They must go back to traditional ways of approaching race and approaching equality of policing of all citizens under the law. DEI must cease taking such a prominent role within the way our officers are trained, and they must begin to recognise that avoiding being accused of racism, whilst important, is not the be all and end all.