I've told the story before of my introduction to the philosophy of policing, but I think it bears repeating in relation to the death of Henry Nowak.
I had been knocked off my bicycle by a car and the driver had left the scene before the police arrived. The police wanted to breathalyse him, but he didn't answer the phone number he'd left me (so I could contact him about claiming on his insurance for my injuries and the damage to my bicycle). This irked the police and, as they gave me a lift to my daughter's school, they explained that they weren't sure whether the driver was a wrong 'un, or a decent upstanding member of society who had made a mistake.
It transpired that the police categorise everyone they come into contact with as either scum - such as the sort of person who would leave a fake phone number and leave the scene of a road traffic collision to avoid facing the consequences - or as decent folk that they need to protect from scum.
This actually makes a lot of sense. Humans do this sort of thing all the time, and cognitive shortcuts are the only way that we can process and navigate a world that bombards us with a lot of information and a lot of decisions that could be the difference between life and death if we get them wrong. For the police it's really important that they identify someone who is scum, because those are the people who will try and hurt them.
I also encountered this on non-violent direct action protests I took part in, where the police identified us as not-scum, and a lot safer to deal with than the Rangers/Celtic fans from the prior weekend.
Given the context that they had when they encountered Henry Nowak - that he was the alleged offender - you can see why they would put him into the wrong category, and how that would then lead them to consequently dismiss it when he told them that he had been stabbed. But they need to be able to know when it is safe to challenge their assumptions in an incident like this and to check things.
And they also need to care about whether the people they've categorised as scum live or not, which given the number who have died after being restrained it is not obvious that they always do.
As a general point I think we need to be better about learning from mistakes, and holding people accountable for their failures (these being distinct things) and not shoehorning every shocking incident into a pre-existing ideological divide.
I think some post-incident inquiries would be better conducted by psychologists than lawyers.
I think many people have lost basic public courtesy now.
I see much more rudeness than I used to, including pushing and shoving, and that can come from passengers, customers, punters and even staff.
No-one seems to take responsibility for themselves.
We have entered the age if I Me Mine politics. The run down of money for so many people is self-evident. They have less cash each month - if they have anything left at all. They see the run down of public services and the public environment - pavements, shops, pot-holes etc etc. And they hear that others get stuff for free, or are abusing the system, or are on the take - and getting away with it.
So why be polite when it gets you nowhere? Why be deferent to a system working against you? Why wait your turn when others are pushing and taking?
This is why I would start at street level. Pull up the weeds, fill the cracks in the pavement, fill the pot holes. Repossess the empty property hoarded by investors far away. Start regenerating the environment in a way that is visible and meaningful. Whilst inviting people to get involved - come help us.
Then, hopefully, people start to give a fuck again.
That would be a good start. And I also think it has something to do with everyone being behind a screen all day and in their own bubble.
Councils need enabling though. I'm afraid some of the national adult social care/social care and statutory obligations need loosening so they can have the funds to spend on that.
The US House of Representatives passed a measure that seeks to halt President Donald Trump from taking further military action in Iran.
The 215-208 vote was successful after four Republicans joined Democrats in a public show of disapproval of the war, which began in February.
This is the fourth attempt by the House to rein in Trump's war powers, which critics say lack congressional approval.
The House resolution still needs approval from the Republican-controlled US Senate. Even if it were successful in the Senate, the measure is unlikely to fully curb military action against Iran.
"Anti-white racism is real, and there’ll be more Henry Nowaks until it’s crushed Critical race theory has taken us from Martin Luther King’s inspiring vision of a colour-blind society to today"
When King of the unhinged headline Allister Heath is quoted as a sage source, one has to conclude that PB has lost its mind.
If Alister Heath says it it pretty much guarantees that it is rage-baiting tosh.
I am more inclined to believe Sir Andy Cooke, the recently reired Inspector of Constabulary:
"Cooke, who was appointed by the Conservatives and won praise from both main parties, said: “Throughout my five years at the inspectorate, I found no evidence at all to support any claim there was an anti-white bias in operational policing."
I believe as a nation we are approaching a very dangerous crossroads. When a disingenuous hypocrite politician is allowed to promote a totally false narrative, a narrative which far from being called out is propagated by the Daily Telegraph as fact we are heading to a place that we resisted in the 1930s. By the "likes" that the original post got, even the august posters of PB are buying into these lies.
“Our commitment to racial equity means producing equality of policing outcomes for people from different ethnic groups by responding to individuals and communities according to their specific needs, circumstances and experiences, with understanding that these will be racialised and with the aim of reducing harm. It does not mean treating everyone ‘the same’ or being ‘colour blind’ (racial equality).” – NPCC
When police forces are being told to do this, and they are, it is clear to all but a complete idiot that two tier policing is a reality. It is not a conspiracy, it is not a 'vibe', it is there in black and white. Police forces are actively being judged by the Government on whether they can produce equal outcomes for ethnic minorities when compared to white people. That means if there is an epidemic of a particular crime amongst an ethnic minority, ignoring it.
I have pointed this out to you, and will continue to do so. By ignoring it, it is now you who is lying.
It does not mean that if there is an epidemic of a particular crime amongst an ethnic minority, ignoring it. You’ve just made that up. A black man walking down the street in the UK is much more likely to be stopped by police than a white man.
That’s too simplistic.
A neatly dressed black man in a well fitting suit walking down a street in a middle class area has about as much chance of being stopped as a neatly dressed white man in a well fitting suit on the same street.
But he has a much lower chance of being stopped than a white man who looks out of place by virtue of his dress, behaviour etc.
It’s way too simplistic to just say “he’s black” as if that’s the only attribute that matters
I didn’t say it was the only attribute that matters.
(And — anecdote alert — a friend’s partner who was a well-dressed black man driving a nice car had plenty of stories about how many times the police stopped him!)
The way you presented the data implied that.
As did the Right Revd John Sentamu when he was Bishop of Stepney:
The only black member of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry, which found that the metropolitan police was institutionally racist, yesterday said he felt demeaned after an officer stopped and searched his car.
John Sentamu, the Anglican Bishop of Stepney, was made to get out of his vehicle in the rain after being stopped near St Paul's cathedral.
He said it was the eighth time in eight years that he had been questioned by police exercising their stop and search powers, which research has shown is directed disproportionately at black people. ... The bishop asked him why he had been stopped. "He said 'just open the boot'. His voice was getting agitated.
"He asked me what I did, and I said 'I'm the Bishop of Stepney'. He said 'whoops'. I revealed my dog collar and he looked as if he'd just seen a ghost."
So do you agree there was at that time a culture of institutional police racism at that time that needed tackling?
I don’t recall ever denying historically there was institutional racism, not just against blacks, in Plod that needed tackling so I’m not quite sure why you need to phrase it that way.
It’s totally irrelevant to today
Is it? Lots of people denied it at the time. I am glad that you were not one of them.
Of course all senior coppers now were junior coppers in that culture. It takes a long time for these things to change.
"Anti-white racism is real, and there’ll be more Henry Nowaks until it’s crushed Critical race theory has taken us from Martin Luther King’s inspiring vision of a colour-blind society to today"
Heath seems to be arguing that the efforts to "crush" racism in the police have had the unintended consequence of creating "anti-white" racism. What makes him think the approach his rhetoric implies won't have similarly unintended consequences ?
Or is he simply rabble rousing ?
We should have neither.
You don't solve racism with "anti-racism", which is just sanctioned racism.
"Anti-white racism is real, and there’ll be more Henry Nowaks until it’s crushed Critical race theory has taken us from Martin Luther King’s inspiring vision of a colour-blind society to today"
Employment rates (2022 figures): White 77% Black 69%
Stop and search (2023 figures) per 100,000: White British 5.6 Black 24.5
Court judges (2024 figures) v working age population (2021 figures): White 89.6% v 80.7% Black 1.3% v 4.4%
Median earnings (2022): White £14.35 per hour Black £13.53 per hour
Employment - controlled for education? Stop and search - controlled for location, criminal tendency (ie gang membership) etc? Judges - controlled for age? Earnings - controlled for education?
Those are all raw figures. Court judges is compared with the working age population.
The ADR UK report linked to above does more in terms of trying to control for other factors.
Raw figures are pretty meaningless.
It’s a particular bugbear of mine that people look at the percentage of, say, court judges in their 60s who are black and say “it’s too low, we’re racist”.
No. It just means that 35 years ago we had fewer black lawyers qualifying, and hence have a smaller pool of candidates for judges today. It will work itself out over time
Raw figures are a good starting point. But, yes, these are complex phenomena where it can be difficult to know what factors are at play…
… which is what I’ve been saying in reaction to the headless chickens running around claiming we have two tier policing and anti-white racism based on one event that we still don’t know the full details of.
A totally fiat point. Here's another one. The incident was in December last year, essentially 6 months ago. So why hasn't the investigation into the policed conduct been completed? It didn't need to wait for the court case to finish, the outcome would not affect what happened on the night. If I had any power I'd be getting that report finished asap.
But then the next problem will be if the report doesn't match the narrative for the far right, they will claim it's a whitewash. A better question might be how have we reached a situation where people believe this narrative?
"Anti-white racism is real, and there’ll be more Henry Nowaks until it’s crushed Critical race theory has taken us from Martin Luther King’s inspiring vision of a colour-blind society to today"
Employment rates (2022 figures): White 77% Black 69%
Stop and search (2023 figures) per 100,000: White British 5.6 Black 24.5
Court judges (2024 figures) v working age population (2021 figures): White 89.6% v 80.7% Black 1.3% v 4.4%
Median earnings (2022): White £14.35 per hour Black £13.53 per hour
Employment - controlled for education? Stop and search - controlled for location, criminal tendency (ie gang membership) etc? Judges - controlled for age? Earnings - controlled for education?
Those are all raw figures. Court judges is compared with the working age population.
My understanding is when contrilled for relevant factors like parental income whites do considerably worse for education (apart from Roma, who do worst of all).
There are a range of different ethnic disparities in education, at different levels of education. So, for example, white kids are less likely to go to higher education, but once in higher education, they are less likely to drop out and they get higher grades. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9195/ is a good starting point. The paper I linked to previously was a particularly rigorous attempt to control for multiple factors when looking at attainment at medical school. It found that non-white students (which in this context largely means south Asian rather than Black) scored lower than white students in final exams, after controlling for a range of factors, including prior educational attainment.
These are complex social phenomena. I am glad people are interested in looking into them. There is plenty of research here (and it’s all more sophisticated than a Telegraph editorial).
A number of officers in the force responsible for the arrest of Henry Nowak felt “controlled and pressured to feel certain ways” after receiving mandatory diversity training, a survey has revealed
But our bureaucrat in chief is adamant that the toothless IOPC investigation which is buying copious whitewash right now will find it wasn't fear of being seen as racist or anything to with bullshit diversity training that has infected every aspect of the public sector.
Max, hun, stop acting like a chump.
I work in the public sector, you don't. I have not had any "bullshit diversity training" in any of the institutions where I have worked. That's enough to disprove your thesis about every aspect of the public sector. Can I suggest changing your media diet?
Yes, I've had enough of grifters on the right projecting nonsense at the gullible to get them angry. Because it leads to people getting hurt.
See also:
Over the weekend Orla Minihane, a national spokesperson for Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain party, claimed that Eastbury School in Barking, east London, had left a young girl in tears after confiscating her packed lunch.
Minihane claimed this was because the pupil “had a ham sandwich [and] pork is banned” at the school.
The post on X quickly amassed 33,000 likes, more than half a million views and vast numbers of anti-Muslim replies. In response to those who asked for the evidence of the ham sandwich ban, Minihane said she was “merely telling you what I was told”, and invited followers to “call the school” if they don’t believe her.
So London Centric did exactly that.
The school directed us to Barking and Dagenham Council, who told us: “Eastbury Community School is not a pork-free school and pork products are available within the school’s catering provision. The school is not aware of any incident in which a pupil has had food confiscated for bringing pork products into school.”
The populist right tells lies to make the gullible angry. And I've had enough of kid-gloving that.
When you flick through PB and you think you've lost your marbles and then you come across a post like this with 13 'likes' it's quite life affirming. Not everyone's a Telegraph reading Faragist moron.
On the other hand, it gives credence to Leon's point that the site has been taken over by a mob of Bluesky Centrist Dads who all agree with each other.
"Anti-white racism is real, and there’ll be more Henry Nowaks until it’s crushed Critical race theory has taken us from Martin Luther King’s inspiring vision of a colour-blind society to today"
Employment rates (2022 figures): White 77% Black 69%
Stop and search (2023 figures) per 100,000: White British 5.6 Black 24.5
Court judges (2024 figures) v working age population (2021 figures): White 89.6% v 80.7% Black 1.3% v 4.4%
Median earnings (2022): White £14.35 per hour Black £13.53 per hour
Employment - controlled for education? Stop and search - controlled for location, criminal tendency (ie gang membership) etc? Judges - controlled for age? Earnings - controlled for education?
Those are all raw figures. Court judges is compared with the working age population.
My understanding is when contrilled for relevant factors like parental income whites do considerably worse for education (apart from Roma, who do worst of all).
There are a range of different ethnic disparities in education, at different levels of education. So, for example, white kids are less likely to go to higher education, but once in higher education, they are less likely to drop out and they get higher grades. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9195/ is a good starting point. The paper I linked to previously was a particularly rigorous attempt to control for multiple factors when looking at attainment at medical school. It found that non-white students (which in this context largely means south Asian rather than Black) scored lower than white students in final exams, after controlling for a range of factors, including prior educational attainment.
These are complex social phenomena. I am glad people are interested in looking into them. There is plenty of research here (and it’s all more sophisticated than a Telegraph editorial).
Thank God we have you to guide us all through it and you come totally free of all preconceived notions of your own.
I've told the story before of my introduction to the philosophy of policing, but I think it bears repeating in relation to the death of Henry Nowak.
I had been knocked off my bicycle by a car and the driver had left the scene before the police arrived. The police wanted to breathalyse him, but he didn't answer the phone number he'd left me (so I could contact him about claiming on his insurance for my injuries and the damage to my bicycle). This irked the police and, as they gave me a lift to my daughter's school, they explained that they weren't sure whether the driver was a wrong 'un, or a decent upstanding member of society who had made a mistake.
It transpired that the police categorise everyone they come into contact with as either scum - such as the sort of person who would leave a fake phone number and leave the scene of a road traffic collision to avoid facing the consequences - or as decent folk that they need to protect from scum.
This actually makes a lot of sense. Humans do this sort of thing all the time, and cognitive shortcuts are the only way that we can process and navigate a world that bombards us with a lot of information and a lot of decisions that could be the difference between life and death if we get them wrong. For the police it's really important that they identify someone who is scum, because those are the people who will try and hurt them.
I also encountered this on non-violent direct action protests I took part in, where the police identified us as not-scum, and a lot safer to deal with than the Rangers/Celtic fans from the prior weekend.
Given the context that they had when they encountered Henry Nowak - that he was the alleged offender - you can see why they would put him into the wrong category, and how that would then lead them to consequently dismiss it when he told them that he had been stabbed. But they need to be able to know when it is safe to challenge their assumptions in an incident like this and to check things.
And they also need to care about whether the people they've categorised as scum live or not, which given the number who have died after being restrained it is not obvious that they always do.
As a general point I think we need to be better about learning from mistakes, and holding people accountable for their failures (these being distinct things) and not shoehorning every shocking incident into a pre-existing ideological divide.
I think some post-incident inquiries would be better conducted by psychologists than lawyers.
To be fair, it's pretty shit being a police officer. You have to deal with the worst members of the public and take a not inconsiderable degree of personal risk. Violence is common.
Meanwhile, you're expected to exercise real-time political and social judgement whilst being under imminent threat. And bear in mind not all police officer will be, err, highly educated.
Now, we should have high standards for them, because they wield authority, force and the law, but they aren't always going to get it right.
A number of officers in the force responsible for the arrest of Henry Nowak felt “controlled and pressured to feel certain ways” after receiving mandatory diversity training, a survey has revealed
But our bureaucrat in chief is adamant that the toothless IOPC investigation which is buying copious whitewash right now will find it wasn't fear of being seen as racist or anything to with bullshit diversity training that has infected every aspect of the public sector.
Max, hun, stop acting like a chump.
I work in the public sector, you don't. I have not had any "bullshit diversity training" in any of the institutions where I have worked. That's enough to disprove your thesis about every aspect of the public sector. Can I suggest changing your media diet?
Yes, I've had enough of grifters on the right projecting nonsense at the gullible to get them angry. Because it leads to people getting hurt.
See also:
Over the weekend Orla Minihane, a national spokesperson for Rupert Lowe’s Restore Britain party, claimed that Eastbury School in Barking, east London, had left a young girl in tears after confiscating her packed lunch.
Minihane claimed this was because the pupil “had a ham sandwich [and] pork is banned” at the school.
The post on X quickly amassed 33,000 likes, more than half a million views and vast numbers of anti-Muslim replies. In response to those who asked for the evidence of the ham sandwich ban, Minihane said she was “merely telling you what I was told”, and invited followers to “call the school” if they don’t believe her.
So London Centric did exactly that.
The school directed us to Barking and Dagenham Council, who told us: “Eastbury Community School is not a pork-free school and pork products are available within the school’s catering provision. The school is not aware of any incident in which a pupil has had food confiscated for bringing pork products into school.”
The populist right tells lies to make the gullible angry. And I've had enough of kid-gloving that.
When you flick through PB and you think you've lost your marbles and then you come across a post like this with 13 'likes' it's quite life affirming. Not everyone's a Telegraph reading Faragist moron.
On the other hand, it gives credence to Leon's point that the site has been taken over by a mob of Bluesky Centrist Dads who all agree with each other.
When posters criticise Starmer they will get lots of likes. When posters criticise Farage they will get lots of likes. It is the nature of a political dynamic where 25-28% may be enough to win a majority at the next election, as that means a clear, significant majority are in favour of something else.
Comments
Councils need enabling though. I'm afraid some of the national adult social care/social care and statutory obligations need loosening so they can have the funds to spend on that.
We operate as a gerontocracy.
The 215-208 vote was successful after four Republicans joined Democrats in a public show of disapproval of the war, which began in February.
This is the fourth attempt by the House to rein in Trump's war powers, which critics say lack congressional approval.
The House resolution still needs approval from the Republican-controlled US Senate. Even if it were successful in the Senate, the measure is unlikely to fully curb military action against Iran.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cj6pldg39deo
Of course all senior coppers now were junior coppers in that culture. It takes a long time for these things to change.
Same in my profession of course.
You don't solve racism with "anti-racism", which is just sanctioned racism.
So why hasn't the investigation into the policed conduct been completed? It didn't need to wait for the court case to finish, the outcome would not affect what happened on the night. If I had any power I'd be getting that report finished asap.
But then the next problem will be if the report doesn't match the narrative for the far right, they will claim it's a whitewash. A better question might be how have we reached a situation where people believe this narrative?
(And yes I know they won't all have come on small boats...)
These are complex social phenomena. I am glad people are interested in looking into them. There is plenty of research here (and it’s all more sophisticated than a Telegraph editorial).
Meanwhile, you're expected to exercise real-time political and social judgement whilst being under imminent threat. And bear in mind not all police officer will be, err, highly educated.
Now, we should have high standards for them, because they wield authority, force and the law, but they aren't always going to get it right.
The best way is to engage with them calmly.