US criticises 'two-tiered policing' over UK murder case
The US State Department has joined in a campaign, started by Elon Musk to encourage the English far right, attacking what they characterise as "two-tier policing" following a horrible case in which a young Sikh man stabbed and killed another young man, Henry Nowak. When the police attended he falsely claimed he was the victim of a racist attack by Nowak, who was briefly handcuffed by police as he lay dying on the ground (though the police did not then realise how serious his injuries were).
This has led to a protest that turned into a riot, and it's pretty clear that the far-right want to see a repeat of last year's
anti-asylum seekers riots and the previous year's rioting in
the wake of the Southport stabbings.
It's bad enough that Elon Musk is whipping up the far-right, but it's something else when the US government joins in.
For what it's worth, here's what the
judge said while sentencing the attacker
Another consequence of those lies is that the attending police officers honestly believed that there were reasonable grounds for suspecting Henry had committed an offence and arrested him with the consequence he was handcuffed for about a minute before his condition further deteriorated and the arresting officer began CPR. The police were given a convincing but wholly false narrative of the incident. It was dark and Henry was wearing a dark top. The entry damage caused by the knife through it, would not have been obvious. Whilst there was visible blood on Henry, it would not have clearly been seen coming from that wound and the clearly visible facial wound was not lifethreatening. Henry was complaining that he had been stabbed and was struggling to breathe but that would not have necessarily told the officers how serious the situation had become. It is the experience of the criminal courts that sometimes, someone arrested and handcuffed will feign injury in the hope they may be released. These police officers were faced with having to make quick decisions in pressurised circumstances about the best way to act. The genuine shock to the particular police officer, when he realised that he had been giving CPR to Henry when he had a serious chest wound tends to show that he was doing his best in a very difficult situation.