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The bodycam footage of Henry Nowak was released. Mostly peaceful protests ensue.
A summary of the story (most of this info is in the PDF I'm about to link, feel free to skip this section and read it yourself): Henry Nowak had had a few beers (still under the legal limit), saw the Sikh man, Vickrum Digwa, pulled out his phone and started recording, and called out to him a few times "Are you a bad man?", with Digwa replying "I am a bad man." The recording ended shortly after Digwa grabbed Nowak's phone. The judge giving the sentencing said that Nowak was not asking this with hostility in his voice (warning, PDF download); he likely was drawn to ask about it upon seeing the larger of the two knives that Digwa carried. Yes, two knives. Digwa was carrying two ceremonial knives that are permitted to him as a religious article, one of them being a kirpan, an 8 inch one, on a sheath over his waistband.
There is no video record of the struggle after the video ended, but Digwa stabbed Nowak 4 times. The stab to the chest was the fatal one, passing through all of Nowak's clothing and penetrating upwards, between the two uppermost ribs, puncturing a lung and penetrating even deeper to cut a vein behind the collarbone, a wound of 8 cm in depth. There was no apparent injury to Digwa himself, though he claimed his eye had been bruised when the police officers arrived. Digwa took some of his own videos of the dying Nowak after stabbing him, telling him he had not been stabbed. His brother, Gurpreet, made the call to 911. Before the officers arrived, Digwa handed his kirpan to his mother and told her to take it away. He also kept Nowak's phone, and didn't tell the officers he had it. Nobody told the officers that Nowak had been stabbed, certainly not Digwa, who might have been the only one present who would know that.
As shown in the bodycam video, the police arrive for Gurpreet's complaint, briefly listen to Digwa's complaint, and quickly determine that Nowak should be arrested, so they drag his limp body into a better position to be handcuffed. Nowak weakly tells them that he's been stabbed, which the arresting officer impassively denies. The other officers investigate this claim a bit more; the female officer can tell that he's in rough shape, and notes that his pupils aren't even reacting to the light. They tried CPR on him after this, presumably; in the judge's remarks, one officer was horrified to learn of the chest wound after having done chest compressions on him.
So, there's rioting. The BBC doesn't frame it quite as sympathetically as they framed the anti-racism rioting from 6 years ago, though. Which brings us to our George Floyd comparison.
George Floyd was accused of using counterfeit bills. He had been arrested many times before. When they arrested him this time, they knelt on his (neck? upper back?) as he slowly died, claiming, as Henry Nowak had when he died, that he couldn't breathe. The public saw it as an execution of Floyd just because he was black, even though Floyd actually died from the fentanyl in his system, and the kneeling was department protocol (inadvised protocol, if the suspect is having trouble breathing).
In this case, the police presumed guilt of the nearly-dead unarmed man, even as his murderer was still upright and telling all kinds of lies. The public broadly sees this as anti-white bias, paralleling the racial claims from Floyd. Unlike Floyd, Nowak was actually murdered, and he was murdered with a knife that the white members of the public can't even own or carry for self defense. They can't even carry pepper spray. That Digwa as a racial and religious outsider to Britain is also an enhancing factor.
I will interject a brief defense of the police in this case: I took a concealed carry class recently, and I have also watched a few Paul Harrell videos on the subject. In self-defense situations, you want the police on your side. The way to do this is to call them first, before the real attacker does, and establish that you are the injured party, the complainant, and he is the injurer, even if he's lying in a pool of his own blood. Digwa did these things, and hid information from the police, so it's a little more understandable that they made a mistake. In light of the Pakistani rape scandal, however, I also find it understandable if the public doesn't find it understandable, and really do suspect that the police have an anti-white bias. And of course, it's completely unacceptable that they dismissed his claims of being stabbed, especially since he was on the ground when they found him.
For me, there's a lot more meat to these protests than the 2020 BLM protests. If I lived in the UK, I would probably be protesting too (peacefully!). If liberal societies continue along their outgroup-favoritism path, they might find that the post Civil Rights Movement atmosphere, whose protocol they were acting in accordance with, has completely evaporated, and they must forge a new and uncertain path forward. That's the human condition.
Also worth mentioning, after Nowak died in their custody, they thought it important to search his phone for racism. When that turned up nothing, they went to his father to inform him of what happened, and searched his phone as well, hoping they can find some racism there. Whatever you think of their behavior in the heat of the moment, their action afterwards is not indicative of an honest mistake, in my opinion.
This specific claim appears to be the product of Chinese whispers; Millennial Woes's exhaustive account of the entire incident can find no evidence for it.
Damn what an infuriating read. I'm torn though, everything the murder and his family did is beyond evil. However is there any evidence that Novak was accosted without any provocation on his part? It sounds like he was drunk and drunkenly his called out to the non-drunk guy with a big fucking sword, and tried to banter with him in an insulting way. Like does he have any survival instincts? You do not insult the guy with the sword. You don't acknowledge them, you just keep fucking walking, silently. I've seen people with guns, knives, or just general dangerous dispositions while drunk, out and about, you better believe I don't engage, interact or acknowledge them. I definitely don't try to be funny and insult them.
Maybe brits are just stupid and coddled to the point that they can't survive in a world filled with non-coddled, tribal savages. Maybe its an American thing to have at least some danger sense and self awareness. Assume everyone is carrying, be nice, and ignore them.
EDIT: This is the part I'm talking about, like dude just shup up and keep walking.
It's clear to me Digwa is a malcontent, angry at the world, angry at society, and not in a good mood. Some drunk white guy starts talking shit and he just snaps, right to murder, torture, gaslighting, etc. Novak is the effigy for all his hate at the world.
I can only assume the knives Digwa was carrying weren't visible on his person when Nowak ran into him. If so, I doubt the possibility even occurred to him that Digwa was armed. I certainly wasn't aware of religious exemptions to the UK's LOICENSE laws prior to this case, and Nowak probably wasn't either.
More cynically, one might say that a lifetime of antiracist education completely compromised Nowak's ability to assess threats in a sensible way. It simply did not occur to him that the scary-looking Indian in religious garb walking around with a scowl on his face (and perhaps visibly carrying ceremonial weapons) might not respond too favourably to playful banter.
You are aware the massive dagger he used to kill him was visible on his chest when the police were speaking to him, right?
My understanding is that Digwa had two blades on his person, the larger of which he used to kill Nowak, which his mother then removed from the crime scene and brought back to the family home (for which she was convicted). The blade in the photo you linked below is the smaller one which he did not attack Nowak with.
Even if Digwa was openly brandishing the weapons, I can imagine that Nowak might not have noticed. The bodycam footage was filmed in front of a house with a floodlight, but if Nowak and Digwa encountered each other in a dimly-lit street, the weapons on Digwa's person may not have been as obvious. Also consider that Nowak had had a few drinks and was distracted filming a Snapchat video before and during the encounter.
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No, it wasn't. The dagger he used to kill him was on a sheath on his belt. But it wasn't even present when the police arrived, as the original post says. He gave it to his mother to take it into the house so it wouldn't be found. As for the blade on his chest, the bodycam footage is too low resolution for me to identify a knife there.
However, you are correct that Nowak might have seen the blade, considering that location.
https://i.imgur.com/b8FD0Bb.png
Where did you get this image? It's not a frame in the bodycam video. In the bodycam video, I can't see any dagger in that location. For the image, I have no idea when it was taken, or who that is. The person looks similar, but blurry enough that I can't tell if it's the same person. And the sentencing remarks tell a completely different story than anything like this. They charged his mother explicitly for hiding a murder weapon before the police arrived.
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I buy this, I think the article points out the 8-incher was externally carried and is what Novak got stabbed with. I'd bet that is externally carried. But it would make sense to me that a lifetime of not-noticing + mainstream British education has made an entire generation of kids be unable to exist in a world with any sort of real-world aggression.
Note: however, a lifetime of multicultural education should inform you that Sihks as a religion are specifically armed. I learned this shit decades ago in social studies, in a fly-over state in America. Long before I actually ever interacted with a Sihk in person.
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