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by jadamson 5 days ago
> I am saying that this one event is being used as ammunition by racist organisations to further their aims.

That much follows as sure as night follows day. I'm reminded of the riots after the police killing of Mark Duggan [1]. Those who understood themselves to be on the receiving end of policed mistreatment latched on to it, using it as an excuse to loot and start fires, regardless of the fact that Duggan was lawfully killed on his way back from purchasing an illegal firearm - a weapon that he, ironically, intended to use to kill another black man.

There's an outside chance you're correct that the police's treatment of Nowak was simply incompetence, but paired with the explicit policy to treat racial groups differently to one another, that is not how it will be perceived. Add to that the fact that his murderer falsely accused him of racism to obscure the fact he'd just fatally stabbed the man, and the racial dynamic is undeniable.

That dynamic concretely exists. It exists on paper, in the mind of Nowak's killer, and in the minds of those protesting. The question then is how to defuse it. If you think immigration/diversity are positives (and I agree that they can be, with some caveats), my suggestion would be that you should be as against the IPCC's notion of "racial equity" as I am, even if only because the current situation was bound to happen regardless of any p=0.01 direct line between the IPCC document and this particular incident.

In other words: even if you were right, it would barely matter. Mark Duggan has rarely been brought up as an example of injustice since the facts of the case were fully elucidated, but that IPCC document, and others like it [2], will be an endless source of grief.

> It's wrong to use this as an example of why immigration is bad for society.

The top comment mentioned "two-tier justice" and we have argued from there. You are the only person to even use the words "immigration" or "diversity" until now.

I would like to think that we can have immigration and diversity without an IPCC that says police shouldn't treat people equally, or a sentencing council that thinks provision of PSRs should be based on ethnicity, or vetting panels that that allow ineligible applicants to join the police force.

Am I wrong? Let me know and I'll update my opinions accordingly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Mark_Duggan

[2] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2gn9zqkp9o

1 comments

The fundamental issue isn’t that the police believed Person A rather than Person B when they first arrived at the scene - the police can be misled like anyone else. The issue is that they failed to properly check on someone who claimed to have been stabbed. That is something that they should do regardless of whether they find the claim credible or not. There is certainly no police policy which prevents them from doing this when the victim is white. And indeed, one could say that the British police are commendably balanced on this point, as (in flagrant contradiction to that one out of context sentence that people have been quoting, from a document that’s not even a policy document) they have also have a track record of ignoring the pleas of plenty of people of color, disabled people, etc. etc. who have appealed to them for medical attention.

> There's an outside chance you're correct that the police's treatment of Nowak was simply incompetence, but paired with the explicit policy to treat racial groups differently to one another, that is not how it will be perceived.

That’s how it will be perceived if Reform’s shit-stirring is ultimately successful. But actually, my sense is that Reform are out of step with the majority of the British public on this one. I don’t think a majority of British people will buy their narrative; it’s too openly opportunistic and divisive, and based on twitter-brained logic that only the terminally online could find persuasive. It’s telling that even Kemi Badenoch wouldn’t go along with them on this one.