We have all been deeply moved by the dreadful murder of student Henry Nowak in Southampton. His murderer, a British Sikh, was jailed last week. He and his brother had falsely claimed that Henry had racially abused him, and police bodycam footage shows Henry being handcuffed and disbelieved when he repeatedly cried out he had been stabbed and couldn’t breathe.
This is a horrific, awful event. There is no doubt that it was a shocking example of poor policing, and all of us who have watched the footage or read the details should absolutely be angry about it.
But because it involved an ethnic minority perpetrator and a white victim, it has caused fury among those who believe that Britain is subject to "two-tier policing" – alleging that minorities are treated more favourably by police. Police anti-racism guidance states that a commitment to racial equity "does not mean treating everyone the same". This guidance is now under review, but it’s worth saying that it was introduced to try and address the fact that ethnic minorities are actually disproportionately stopped and searched by police – indeed, a response to the evidence that two-tier policing had indeed been a reality in the past, but where some ethnic minorities were treated much worse than white people.
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