A question about Henry Nowak….

[CurlewKate]

Is there any actual evidence to support the suggestion that this completely awful event had anything to do with with “two tier policing” and was a hideous example of appalling policing and in particular, appalling first responding? It is unforgivable that the police didn’t check Nowak properly for injuries. But there was no weapon at the scene and the police were met with 4 people who had called them and were all telling the same story.They made assumptions which they would probably have made regardless of the ethnicity of the people involved. And in 999 cases out of 1000 the assumptions would have been right. The sort of judgement call the police have to make all the time. So it seems to me that it’s not about policy, it’s about incompetence.

Assess the situation properly. Any police I’ve heard on this say they failed to do that.

And they didn’t believe the dying young student but the murderer so definitely got that wrong.

No but thats the information the police had been given. They can only go on what they are told initially

They did!

I agree.

If they had arrived a few minutes earlier then this entire story would have been different.

They would have seen his stab wounds sooner, got medical attention sooner and Digwa would have been arrested and charged sooner.

It’s only because Henry unfortunately died that it makes it seem all so unfair.

But the officers seemed to have followed protocol and would likely do the same in any situation.

Sorry. I’m not following.

Digwa’s mother removed and hid the weapon.

His brother made false accounts both on the phone and face to face.

Neither of them murdered him, Digwa did. They didn’t murder him, they enabled and supported the murderer.

No matter how wrong that is, and it is, it isn’t murder.

The murderer mum is being sentenced in july

But they did.

They arrived at the property, asked what was going on, handcuffed Henry, checked him for injuries, called an ambulance and arrested Digwa.

This all happened within a matter of minutes.

In hindsight, they should have checked both Digwa and Henry for injuries and weapons before handcuffing or questioning them over what happened but I don’t think this is protocol.
And it literally happened within minutes.

In child abuse cases where the father is the one doing the abuse but the mother doesn’t do anything; whether that’s stop it, call an ambulance or take them to hospital then they are usually charged both with murder.

They knew their son had stabbed him. He quite clearly asked for an ambulance multiple times. They had his phone. They had their own phones. They had a duty of care and doing nothing is not a defence to murder or all these horrendous women would be off the hook. And they didn’t just do nothing. They actively mislead people who could help, took the ability for Henry to help himself, hid weapons, colluded in a foreign language.

The black and white thinking of some is frightening, “Mr X said Mr Y was in the wrong…. Therefore there is no other situation…. Mr Y is wrong and must be subdued and arrested ?

Yep. Henry said he couldn’t breathe and had been stabbed.

Of course that meant nothing just the murderer believed.

All those “minutes” had Digwa lying, his family lying, the “don’t think so mate”…. Henry dying?

Has anything been reported about why Digwa attacked Henry?
I know it was found that there was no evidence Henry had been in any way abusive to him. But what actually happened?

Personally couldn’t give a flying anything what language they colluded in.

They knew he had stabbed him, from what I can gather they weren’t even there when he did it so couldn’t have stopped him, and instead supported him after the fact. They didn’t encourage him to, take part in the crime itself in any way, provide him with the means to do it.

We can’t rewrite laws because we think they deserve harsher punishment.

There’s clearly many who don’t care in their self righteous, justice warrior “look how kiiiind I am”
remember some young men can be racist, so Henry’s death is a whoopsie “cock up” as @CurlewKate calls it… nothing to see here… anyway what about…

I've heard police officers say they should have been more open minded to a changing situation. Checked more thoroughly for the knife wound for example. They sort of looked but not properly straight away and it was dark. Thats why the inquiry needs to happen and the people doing it need to be allowed to do their jobs without people deciding they know what the problem was.
If the police were following protocol that protocol should be changed because, aside from stabbing, young men can have head injuries, be suffering from a stroke, be having a life threatening reaction to medication etc etc all of which can presents as drunk and confused (which is what the police seemed to assume he was). If training is an issue there needs to be better training. It would be nice if his legacy was that procedures were pit in place to ensure it could never happen again. Rather than only riots.

Oh don’t be silly, @ALovelyPinkUnicorn.What are you getting out of refusing to engage in any sort of discussion about this? I’m happy to withdraw “cock up” and replace it with “catastrophic incompetence” if that makes it easier for you.

@chocoluv "The woman officer said should we sit him up and the other police officer argued that he didn’t want him chocking on his blood which is why he said keep him on his side"

no, they said thought he was going to be sick

paying no attention to the fact that he had blood in his mouth

Also, why are some posters saying he was checked for injuries? He wasn't. They lifted up his shirt and took a cursory glance at his flank. One flank in fact because he was on the floor.

The father and the brother should now face charges for perverting the course of justice. I can only hope that this is being looked at.

We've heard the 999 call, in which the brother clearly says that there was racial abuse, that Henry was drunk, and that he has injured his face after climbing over a fence/car and that no weapons were involved.

I don't know if the court will have heard the dispatch call, but I'm sure that would have shaped the response, too. If they got instructions that there was a racial attack, the suspect was drunk, and that his injury was due to a fall, they would have a certain perspective on attendance, which was confirmed by the people present at the scene.

Once there, Henry was disorientated and his speech was slurred, which may have further reinforced the notion that he was drunk. It is well known that diabetics about to go into coma have been arrested for being drunk and disorderly.

I still think they should have noticed that his hands were waxen, and the fact that he stated that he had been stabbed and asked for an ambulance should have made them stop sooner, but I do have some empathy for them. The fact that his injuries were unsurvivable, and would have been even if a HEMS team was dispatched (due to the location of the stabbing being underneath the collar bone), is of little comfort given that his family knows that he died in distress due to his arrest.

I hope the Force is looking after the officers, regardless of whether they are later found to have fallen short of professional standards. It would be a tragedy if any of them were driven to drastic action because of the public scrutiny. Most people don't have jobs where a mistake or misjudgement leads to catastrophe. They do.

Of course it’s not black and white but Henry was checked for wounds and an ambulance was called minutes after the police had got there.

When police first arrive to a scene they are responding to the phone call and then have seconds to assess the situation, which they did.

How many perpetrators actually call the police and play victim?

Yes we hear about women pretending to have been raped or abused but in reality that is a tiny percentage of cases.

In the majority of cases the person who phones the police and play the victim, are the victim.

I believe the police followed protocol but they just didn’t act fast enough or with enough compassion for Henry.

There was more than 1 police officer there and so there was no reason why 1 couldn’t have spoken to Digwa, whilst the other spoke to Henry.

Perhaps its protocol to do everything in pairs but I will never understand why it wasn’t common sense to just take 1 each.

It’s very relevant. They actually believed if they spoke in punjabi in the back of a police car then they would get away with it. Unbelievable. And in the context of pulling the race card whilst murdering someone that is incredibly brazen behaviour.

I don’t think I am rewriting laws here. Many times people have been charged with joint murder and even if you don’t stab someone. I think standing over them and watching them die and stopping them getting help is taking part in that murder.

It’s bizarre, the statement by the officer “don’t think so mate”, does appear he wasn’t aware that Henry was seriously injured. It was clearly unprofessional to make that flippant comment when the person clearly hadn’t been seen properly by the officer, so he made that comment without knowing whether it was true.

What doesn’t make sense about the whole thing is that the murder’s father was able to ‘detain’ Henry until the police arrived, yet when the police got there the father was not sat on top of someone fighting to get away…he was holding someone upright who was weak and bleeding from being stabbed, and fell on the ground as soon as he was let go of.

If Henry had been as per the 999 call, an racist yob who very verbally abusive and physically abusive (the knocking off of the turban accusation), then why WASN’T he screaming racist abuse and physically fighting the father in order to get away before the police arrived.

Normally with a citizen’s arrest of a yob, you would expect to see 3 people sat on top them. It also appears that the Father made some comment about the fact that Henry wasn’t unable to stand up unaided when handing him over to the police (but didn’t declare his injuries to them). It’s also pretty obvious that Henry wasn’t armed, as he would have used the weapon to escape the citizen’s arrest.

I very much doubt the police officer’s concerned knowingly tried to arrest a dying man, however the fact that they didn’t pick up on the fact that there was something seriously wrong with the situation in front of them. This may be due to racial bias training, as is being suggested by many people currently…but it may actually be more to do with inexperienced or low quality policing, in that the Officer’s we’re lacking in critical judgment skills and not observant enough have that instinctive judgment within the first few seconds of arriving that something didn’t make sense.

I don’t think the Officers prioritised an accusations of racism over a murder, the officers weren’t being called out to a murder scene, they would have been ordinary plod and not detectives, I think they didn’t know what they were dealing with until it was too late. It’s also a very unusual situation to have a murderer and their family members conspiring, without any prior planning, calling the police immediately after a violent assault with intent or cover up the crime. Usually in a case like this, any cover up would involve trying not to come into contact with police and not implicate themselves.

It’s also weird, what was the purpose of calling the police anyway? They knew Henry had been stabbed, the police would find that and also that the story given would not match what was found at the scene, by lying and placing themselves in front of the police, several of the family members made themselves prime suspects. Their story was that he has been abusive, then had been detained in a citizen’s arrest, so how did they intend to explain away that he had been stabbed multiple times?

I think the whole thing is so bizarre that maybe the non-detective plod were not well enough equipped to realise what they were seeing…which may have nothing to do with race, but more about their general ability level.

The thing that REALLY doesn’t make sense about all of it, is why the injuries weren’t spotted immediately…surely there would have been huge amounts of blood both on Henry, on the ground, on the father trying to hold him upright, and maybe even on the murderer?

Did the Police contribute to his death? That’s unclear, the family of the murderer definitely did, because they chose not to call an ambulance and instead call the police only. With the limited first aid that the police could have provided on arrival, and the time it would take for them to summons ambulance…maybe it would have made no difference to the outcome. The Inquest will look into that aspect. However, even if he couldn’t have been saved, he could have been given emotional support/compassion during his final moments by those officers…telling him help is on the way, holding his hand etc. He could have died with less fear and the hope that he was going to be saved, right from the moment the police arrived until he lost consciousness. That is where they for certain wronged him.

I think the way he was stabbed meant that all the blood flowed into his chest cavity. Which meant he was extremely seriously injured but there was no blood except for a bit in his.mouth.
I think the expectation that being stabbed=blood is a common one and quite possibly the police also made that assumption and could easily explain the "don't think so mate" comment. A man saying he was stabbed but no murder weapon or blood.
I agree that shouldn't let the police of the hook but whether this was an individual failure or a procedural failure or a training failure remains to be seen..
Also, as you say they didn't know it was a murder when they attended. And what some of the people are missing out with the "arrested for accusations of racism" is that the police were told he had committed a racist assault. So it was assault they were thinking of. Not just hurty words. Again, not saying that makes it OK
And I agree, it's really upsetting that by the time they realised he was a victim he was already unconscious.

Which meant he was extremely seriously injured but there was no blood except for a bit in his.mouth.

And a big slash caused by the knife across his face too. Wasn’t just “a bit in his mouth”.

Yes but it was dark, he had just fallen onto the ground between a car and a wall. I am not excusing the officers for not checking properly. I am explaining why the fatal stab wound hasn't resulted in "blood everywhere". From the officers words it seems they only noticed blood on his mouth. Which can happen and people having awareness that someone can be seriously injured and it not be immediately obvious is important.

Weird isn’t it, “it was dark” yet we’ve seen the video. Doesn’t look pitch black does it? We can see what’s occurring in the footage from the police cam, light enough to see on film 🤔