The head of the National Black Police Association has warned that changes to anti-racism guidance under consideration by UK police leaders risk being reactive and not properly thought through, in the aftermath of the murder of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak.
Andy George, a Police Service of Northern Ireland chief inspector and head of the NBPA, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the push from politicians and senior officers to re-draft a central anti-racism commitment was happening far more quickly than previous reforms that had been sought for Black communities.
“There’s definitely lessons to be learned from the Henry Nowak case and if the [police watchdog] sees through their thorough investigation that there are things that need to be done and changed – then certainly that’s the time when things should be looked at,” George said. “For us to go forward and for the policing minister to say ‘that needs to be corrected or looked into right now’ – for us, when we’ve pushed for things that impact black communities or black individuals, we’ve never seen policing move as quick as what they’re advocating for right now.”
George added: “So, I would say it is definitely an auto-correction – it’s very swift, it’s quick – I don’t think it’s as well thought-out as it should be. I think it’s reactive to the current swell that we’re seeing in social media and across different areas of public life at the minute.”
The controversy centres on the murder of Nowak, who was arrested by officers as he lay dying after his attacker, 23-year-old Sikh man Vickrum Digwa, falsely claimed he had been racially abused by the student. Digwa was jailed for life with a minimum 21-year term on Monday.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is investigating the police response to the incident. The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) is considering rewording an anti-racism commitment, which states that ensuring racial equality in policing “does not mean treating everyone ‘the same’ or being ‘colour blind’,” after opposition politicians pointed to it as evidence of unequal standards.
Former Home Secretary Jack Straw, who was in office during the 1995 murder of Stephen Lawrence and the subsequent Macpherson Report that branded the Metropolitan Police institutionally racist, told the Telegraph there had been an “over-correction” within policing. He said “much greater care” was needed with police race guidance and claimed “vocal pressure groups” had exerted too much influence.
“There was no question about that but sometimes you get reactions which go too far the other way. That’s obviously happened here,” Straw said.
Baroness Kishwar Falkner, the former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said she did not believe an over-correction had occurred in policing standards, but agreed a perception of unfairness had been established for parts of the community. She accused police forces and other public organisations of trying to “virtue signal”, and said that could result in a “breakdown of impartiality and public trust and confidence”. Falkner also called for unconscious bias training in public bodies to be scrapped because it is “proven not to work”.
Speaking in the House of Lords on Wednesday, Baroness Doreen Lawrence, the mother of Stephen Lawrence, shared her condolences with the Nowak family.
“I think what’s happened with him should never have happened,” she said. “And the police should be at fault for what happened on that night.”