Police handout of the victim, Henry Nowak. New York Post.
Outrage has erupted in the United Kingdom over the Henry Nowak case, where an 18 year old man was stabbed but was arrested by police because the murderer called him racist. New York Post. Nowak, an 18 year old college student, was stabbed by 21 year old Vickrum Digwa, an Indian Sikh man in an unprovoked attack. When police responded to the attack, they believed the attacker over the victim and handcuffed Nowak and read him his rights as he was bleeding to death. Nowak said he had been stabbed and that "I can't breath" while one of the arresting officers said "I don't think you have mate".
Digwa was convicted for the murder and was sentenced to 21 years, but the bodycam footage of the attack wasn't released until yesterday. The case has exploded racial tensions in the UK as many people felt that the attack was compounded by racism by the police against white people and in favor of South Asian immigrants. Protesters could be heard saying "I can't breath" and unrest has erupted in the UK. The incident is putting pressure on already unpopular Prim Minster Kier Starmer, who protesters have named "Two Tier Kier" for the perception that South Asians are treated better than Whites.
My Comment:
I have seen the video of Nowak's death and it was pretty baffling. The officers were handcuffing him and weren't actually checking to see how he was until after he was actually dead (a female officer said his eyes were no longer moving). I'm not a police officer but you would think that they would have done a quick check for wounds after he said he had been stabbed and couldn't breath. To be fair, I wasn't able to see any obvious wounds in the video, but it was obvious he was in very deep distress and it seemed obvious he was dying.
The case has some obvious parallels to the George Floyd case. In that case officers didn't believe a suspect when he said he couldn't breath either and in both cases the arrested person died. But I find this case a lot more outraging than the George Floyd case as the police were at least following policy and I didn't think there was even a hint of racism from the officers there.
But in this case? It was obviously racism. There was no reason to believe Digwa's claims of racism or to doubt Nowak's claims of being stabbed. Instead, Digwa's claims were believed for no reason and Nowak's were very quickly dismissed. He would have died regardless, his injuries were far too severe, but he could have at least been treated and comforted in his death instead of being treated like a common criminal. You could maybe defend putting him in cuffs until things were figured out, but the fact that Digwa was not shows that he was being discriminated against.
It's almost beyond parody. The UK police took the possibility of racism (totally false claims) more seriously than a man dying of multiple stab wounds to his chest. And it's a major cultural problem as DEI policies are standard in the UK. The police in this case were trained to see Nowak as a potential criminal and were primed to ignore the idea that Digwa may have been one. Digwa was also able to openly carry a knife, and not just the ceremonial one Sikh people are allowed to carry due to their religion, but an 8 inch blade in a sheath. White people in the UK aren't even allowed to carry pocket knives but this guy was able to carry an 8 inch blade openly? It's a great example of anarcho-tyranny, the actual criminal was able to run amok but the victim gets treated like a criminal.
It's the same ideology that let Pakistani grooming gangs to run amok for many years in the UK. Police in those cases viewed the young white female victims as scum, not people and weren't able to confront the gangs because they didn't want to be accused of racism against South Asians. I can't imagine that something similar wasn't going on here.
The worst thing is that I don't think anything will change because of this. Yes people are protesting and people are extremely angry but wokeness is way more embedded in the UK. It's official government policy, down from the Prime Minster all the way to the cops on the street. That's not something that changes over night because of one case. I also don't expect anyone in the UK to have a spine.
But I do think that this case should serve as an example for the rest of the world. This kind of outcome was very obviously possible in the United States and I wouldn't be surprised if something similar has happened here. Wokeness has been broken here and is retreating but it still exists and this case should be a warning for folks to not let it ever come back.
Finally, the elephant in the room is why Digwa and his family were in the UK in the first place. Like all crimes committed by immigrants, legal or otherwise, this was a preventable crime. World governments don't even pretend that immigration is good for people who are native to their countries and this is another example.
