Fatal Stabbing of UK Student Sparks Debate on Alleged Anti-White Bias in Policing

The circumstances surrounding the death of 18-year-old Henry Nowak, a white student who was stabbed by a Sikh man last year and then handcuffed by police as he lay dying after being falsely suspected of racism, have sparked a debate over alleged discrimination by police in the UK.

Nowak was killed in Southampton, England, on Dec. 3, 2025, but the incident drew renewed attention after Vickrum Digwa was sentenced to life with a minimum of 21 years in prison on June 1, and following the release of a video showing police dismissing Nowak when he said that he had been stabbed. Digwa had told police he was the victim of a racist attack.

In the video captured by an officer’s body-worn camera, Nowak can be heard saying, “I can’t breathe,” echoing the words of George Floyd, whose death launched a wave of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

Hundreds of protesters demonstrated outside the main police station in Southampton on the evening of June 2, and several people were arrested.

In a June 2 post on X to his 240 million followers, tech billionaire Elon Musk wrote, “Did you know that official police policy requires them to be racist against Whites? It is deeply wrong and must change NOW.”

It was one of several posts by Musk about the Nowak story. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on June 4 that Musk was interfering in UK politics and “trying to whip up division.”

Chief Constable Gavin Stephens, chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), said in an email to The Epoch Times that black communities have the lowest levels of confidence in the police, and addressing that had been the focus of a recent Police Race Action Plan.

“It is essential that we police without fear or favour in keeping the peace and enforcing the law,” Stephens said. “We must do so to earn the confidence of all communities.”

Chris Hobbs, a former Metropolitan Police officer and policing commentator, wrote in a June 2 article on the Police Oracle website that the officers involved in the Nowak incident would have been devastated by his death.

“Police critics on all sides conveniently forget that police, when attending traumatic events, do act with both bravery and compassion,” he said.

Hobbs pointed out that while the criticism now was coming from the right, in the past, members of black activist groups, Muslim organizations, pro-Palestinian activists, Iranian dissident groups, and even soccer fans have all claimed to be the victims of “two-tier policing.”

Is Skin Color a Consideration?

Musk’s post was accompanied by a video of Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp, from the opposition Conservative Party, speaking in the House of Commons on June 2.

“We cannot tolerate a situation in which false allegations of racism by criminals are believed,” Philp said. “We cannot allow the color of someone’s skin to be a consideration in how the police or other public services treat people, yet that has happened.”

U.S. Vice President JD Vance, in a June 5 post on X, said Nowak’s murder was “as tragic as it is enraging.”

“He should still be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it,” Vance wrote.

The Police Race Action Plan was first published in May 2022 by the College of Policing and the NPCC, two bodies which guide policing in England and Wales.

In March 2025, an update of the plan was published, and in his speech on June 2, Philp said the document, “urges police forces to reverse-engineer arrest rates for ethnic groups so that those rates are the same, even though the offending rates are different, by treating different ethnic groups differently.”

He told lawmakers: “Let that sink in for a moment: an official police document actually says that people should be treated differently based on the color of their skin. … The dangerous ideology of so-called anti-racism, which allows people to be treated differently based on race, must end.”

In response, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, herself the British-born daughter of immigrants from Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, said, “This Government will always ensure that the police, in fulfilling their sacred duties to keep our communities safe, always act without fear or favour, and always ensure that every citizen is treated equally.”

According to Home Office data, for the year 2024 to 2025, 79 percent of suspects were classified as from the white ethnic group, 8 percent Asian, 7 percent black, 4 percent mixed, and 2 percent were from another ethnic group.

The Home Office said that when “compared to the proportions in the [Office for National Statistics] Census, these are broadly in line with the proportions for the general population.”

Norman Brennan, a policing commentator who served 31 years with the police in London, told The Epoch Times it was no surprise if police officers on the frontline dealing with crime now have a subconscious bias in favor of ethnic minorities after having the tenets of a controversial Police Race Action Plan instilled in them by their “weak, woke, and weary” bosses.

Stephens said the NPCC was “listening to legitimate concerns” about how some of the police’s anti-racism commitments were worded and would make changes if necessary, adding that this “should not detract from the intent, which is to improve the quality of policing.”

What Is 2-Tier Policing?

In the UK, the phrase “two-tier policing” was popularized in the summer of 2024 when protests and riots broke out in the wake of the murder of three young white girls by Axel Rudakubana, the British-born son of Rwandan immigrants.

The phrase is used to describe the perception that some communities are treated differently by police from others.

In the House of Commons on June 3, Starmer said, “I do not believe that there is two-tier policing in this country.”

The murders in Southport led to a public inquiry into whether authorities failed to take action to prevent Rudakubana from killing three young girls at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class.

During the inquiry, Joanne Hodson, the headteacher at Rudakubana’s school, said she was pressured by mental health services to water down a document to minimize the danger posed by him because of his ethnicity.

Several other examples have been cited by critics of the police and social services.

They include the handling of grooming gangs—men of Pakistani descent who were corrupting and abusing white girls who were sometimes under 16—in several towns mainly in the north of England, between 1997 and 2013.

Dozens of men have since been jailed in connection with grooming gang offenses in recent years, and successive reports have found that police and social services failed to investigate the grooming gangs properly, due to concerns of being accused of racism.

On June 13, 2023, Valdo Calocane—a black man who was born in Guinea-Bissau—fatally stabbed students Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, both 19, in Nottingham, England, and then killed school caretaker Ian Coates before stealing his van and trying to drive over three other people.

Philp told the House of Commons on June 2 that a recent public inquiry into the events in Nottingham had heard that those deciding what to do with Calocane before the murders pointed out there was “an over-representation of young black males in mental health detention.”

“The consequent failure to section Valdo Calocane, in part because he was black, led directly to the murder of three innocent people,” Philp added.

On June 8, Webber’s mother, Emma, said during a joint press conference held by the bereaved families in London that the Nottingham inquiry had revealed a “catastrophic collapse of responsibility.”

“This wasn’t bad luck or an exception. It was a catastrophic collapse of responsibility,” she said. “There is also the undoubted miscarriage of justice that must now be addressed.”

Discrimination Debate

Mass migration to Britain from colonies and former colonies in the Caribbean and the Indian sub-continent started in the 1940s, and many immigrants suffered racism.

In 1959, Kelso Cochrane, an immigrant from Antigua, was fatally stabbed in London in an allegedly racist attack by a group of white men, none of whom were ever caught or charged.

The 1981 Scarman Report, published following riots in Brixton, found that black people had been stopped in disproportionate numbers using so-called “sus laws,” which allowed them to question people for suspicious behavior.

Brennan said Britain was predominantly a “white nation” in the 1960s and 1970s, black people suffered from racism, and the “sus laws” were abused, but he said the murder of Stephen Lawrence, a black teenager, in London in 1993 changed everything.

He said the police’s handling of the case had been “dire and incompetent,” but when the Macpherson Report in 1999 labeled the Metropolitan Police as institutionally racist, it “threw the police on the altar of political correctness.”

Black Lives Matter protests in the United States, triggered by the death of George Floyd, spilled over into the UK, and in February 2021, a report by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services stated that ethnic minorities were over four times more likely to be stopped under stop and search policies than white people.

In the Nowak family’s statement outside court on June 1, they said, “This is not a case about Sikhism. This is not a case about racism. This is a case about murder.”

Mahmood, herself the British-born daughter of immigrants from Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, echoed those words when she spoke in the House of Commons on June 2.

She also pointed out that knife crime in Britain had fallen by 10 percent since July 2024, and knife homicides were down 27 percent and were now at their lowest level in a decade.

In a June 4 post on X, Kemi Badenoch, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, said she had met the Nowak family.

“Everyone knows I have strong views about how we should deal with equality under the law,” Badenoch said. “What the family agreed with me on is that we need to bring common sense back, and that is what we should all be fighting for.”