Henry Nowak - just watched the video for the first time

[EvangelicalAboutButteredToast]

I don’t understand how the officers could not tell he had been stabbed. He repeatedly says he can’t breathe and when he says he has been stabbed, they say, ‘I don’t think so mate.’ When he says it again they ask where and he says his face, they then roll him over so they can look at his face, and the video ends with the officer saying the handcuffed victim was likely going to be sick.

i completely understand the officers went there having been told a lie and you see the perpetrator on the video retelling the lie and claiming he’d been a victim of a racist assault, i just can’t understand how the officers didn’t recognise the guy on the floor was dying.

If you can show me a specific link that shows me exactly the maximum length of knife a Sikh person can wear in their day to day life then that would be helpful. All I can find so far is that Sikhs can enter a court building with a knife no longer than 6 inches.

My heart goes out to Henry's family. I haven't watched the video, as the audio of him pleading is just heartbreaking enough. His poor dad - Lord knows how you find the strength in these times to even give a statement.

Racism is an ugly evil.
Police stereotyping and wrongly profiling victims is dangerous.
Police not remembering their training - doing welfare checks on scene generally have disastrous consequences.

I really hope this will be a catalyst for actual change. We have spent so long denying that there are incompetent police officers on our streets.
We blame DEI training.
We shout about two-tier policing, which is not a new phenomenon
We excuse police incompetence
...
And this is how we end up with another young boy dying and the police officers being absolute idiots. They were duped by horrible criminals and no-one had the presence of mind to at least check the young man had actually been stabbed.
We have seen this too many times.

Yes but it is now....we can't even carry pepper spray so why should any religion be allowed to carry a knife, symbolic or otherwise.

The police are indoctrinated to prioritise accusations of racism above else. If they weren't, Digwa wouldn't have made the claims he did. He knew the power and privilege it gave him.
Nowak was collapsed on the ground and they handcuffed him like some criminal. Yet Digwa wasn't handcuffed when taken away in the police car.

Exactly this. It’s utterly disgraceful and unforgivable. There’s no excuse, and there’s absolutely no way people like Glowingup would be pontificating to that extent if the races had been reversed.
It’s just adds insult to injury (for want of a better phrase).. another level of disregard from another section of society.

I'm not white and I'm disgusted. This is the same treatment US police give black people. We really can't condone this type if lazy stereotype racism. They assume he's guilty because he's a young white male.

I've lived around that area of Southampton. There was a lot of anti-student sentiment amongst the general Southampton population. This likely can't help either.

In the UAE they banned knives -no religious exemptions allowed and the Sikhs remained -didn’t leave the country.
All this nonsense pandering to ‘religion’ of all rites should be banned. People can worship however they like in private but not expect the rest of world to enable it - like the ridiculous situation when exams were moved because some pupils were ‘fasting’ for religious reasons.
Completely outdated superstitions that have no place influencing modern society.

Yep. It’s not just these officers, it’s deeper than that.

Because apparently religion trumps safety

it was the female officer that acted most appropriately and did check Henry. It was the male officer who dismissed or ignored Henry.

He wasn't ' lawfully' allowed to carry the one he killed Henry with though. It was a separate knife. He would have carried it anyway. He used the Kirpan as an excuse. Sikhs have been carrying it forever in this country. It's the same as someone carrying a knife for work. If they carry a penknife but kill someone with a hammer it makes no sense to ban all people from carrying knives for work.

This !
I saw the video and I am beyond furious and sickened.
Digwa needs a much longer sentence as in life and the low life mother and brother need a lengthy sentence.
I could cry at what has happened to the UK it is beyond shameful how we have successive govts. have been so weak.
They need to stop with the DEI nonsense too.
The police prioritised racism and it cost a young boy his life I cannot comprehend this.
Was the same with other cases Valdo Calocane fear of being called racist and he killed 3 people.

How many times? He didn’t stab him with the Kirpan. He stabbed him with an eight inch knife which he was also carrying.

Banning the Kirpan wouldn’t have made an iota of difference because he was also carrying a significantly larger knife.

The onus the media is putting on the ceremonial knife is drawing attention away from what actually happened and what led to this awful tragedy.

But it is part of the same problem and also needs to be addressed to avoid more of this.

That poor, poor boy.

The police were completely incompetent and failed to help someone who was in obvious distress.

I also think that no one should be able to carry a knife, religious or not.

I am disgusted though to hear that weasel Farage trying to exploit this tragedy this morning by giving out interviews.

What do you think would have happened if the police had arrested him for walking around with this illegal knife on display.

Is there any chance that the police were so concerned about not being racist that they would allow a man with a turban to carry a prominent and dangerous knife, whereas a white man would have been arrested on sight?

Is this not a problem?

Exactly @TheHateUGive - irrespective of who was the victim/perpetrator, the police should have checked on the person on the ground (the alleged perpetrator) as well as the person standing (the alleged victim).

It’s not as if Henry was running about or trying to fight them. There were plenty of them (police) to check both persons.

It is as others have said - two tier policing. Fear of offending the brown person/a complaint of racism/a need to show police are not institutionally racist top-trumped their duty to uphold the law in a fair and equitable way.

This was nothing like, for example, the Manchester airport attack when the brothers went in fists swinging. There was zero threat to the police. Henry need not and should not have died. RIP

Two tier

Two tier. Disgusting.

This is a tragedy for the poor young man and there may have been a degree of racial stereotyping but I really hope that it isn't used as an excuse to abuse Sikh people who are an overwhelmingly peaceful and integrating race. This is one bad egg (or rather a family of them) and a police force who managed the situation very poorly, nothing more nothing less. Yes heads need to roll and police need to be much better trained to stop and prioritise protecting life over punishing but what more is the general public expecting?

@EvangelicalAboutButteredToast I don’t know how, but I’ve only heard about this for the first time this morning. I’m absolutely sick that poor child and yes 18 he hasn’t had his life yet so I am classing him as a child.

If we put ourselves in the position of the police officers we can see how ridiculous the Hampshire police force excuses are. Claiming ignorance and being misled is both negligent and dishonest.

Two reported crimes:

1. A neighbour calls police to say a man has been stabbed. This report was backed up by a man lying on the floor unable to get up, increasingly weak and repeatedly saying he’d been stabbed and couldn’t breathe.
2. A man said something racist to me. This one is based solely on the testimony of the alleged victim and his immediate family, who are standing over the collapsed man.

What is your first action? Is it (a) to ascertain the nature of the collapsed man’s injuries and prioritise his medical needs, or (b) arrest the collapsed man as he vomits blood and his eyes cease to dilate.

When the collapsed man has died, what is first action? Is it (a) arrest the man standing over him, or (b) take the suspect to the canteen.

When you contact the dead man’s parents, what is your first action? Is it (a) offer them your deep condolences and promise to get justice for their son, or (b) take the father’s phone to look for racist comments in his private communications.

They failed each of these tests, both in the moment and after the event. It’s indicative of deep institutional problems.

They arrived at the scene, the alleged victim was walking and talking and not visibly injured, the alleged perpetrator is on the ground unable to move or breathe....there was not an attack happening there and then, or a situation to diffuse as such, so why would you not check the person on the ground, or assess whether the information you initially received was correct?

I'm not surprised they are. Like everything else, we allow the horse to bolt, then we try to patch things up with temporary fixes.

Racism has been allowed to exist in the most pernicious ways, and now everything is upside-down; and a non-white killer has now worked out that actually, in that instant, he can also use the 'privilege' of his race as a power to murder an innocent boy.

The ridiculousness of all this is, people have been campaigning for years about about power/privilege and how this is used to manipulate law enforcement.
So many people, whilst unaffected, decided they'd see no evil/hear no evil - it's not true, it doesn't exist, people are always blaming the police who are just trying to their jobs...

Digwa deserved a harsher penalty as his crime was heinous.

Henry deserved better from the police. He was begging for help and no-one cared.

The police officers responsible for treating him so appallingly must also be harshly reprimanded.

As I said before; this is all too familiar and preventable.

Maybe we should be allowed to carry pepper spray.