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Its a sad situation but nothing here seems unique or even too particularly culture war. Police have a bad tendency to trust the first calm person to talk to them, which is Digwa claiming that he got attacked first. They especially trust the calm person over the one who is clearly panicking or having some sort of unidentified issue. This is a problem that gets brought up in domestic abuse circles sometimes, that the abuser seems cool and collected when the cops get called in by a neighbor while the victim will often be emotionally frazzled and angry and look like they're a hostile aggressor.
So given this, the police approach the scene and find a calm guy who says he got attacked and another guy who is panicking and freaking out and is like almost every other situation you see a guy freaking out in, probably on drugs. Violence cases are rare, drug guy being crazy or having an overdose is common. They make the assumption this is like every other case. His wounds were in such a way that they weren't easily visible so even when he's saying he got stabbed, they assume it's the insane mutterings of a druggie high off whatever.
The solution is to check anyway but that doesn't necessarily help unless you constantly reinforce it, since the officers will eventually default back to ignoring it again. Heck one of the cops even acknowledged it, like "oh well I think we have to check anyway don't we?". They knew better but they were used to just ignoring it. They really didn't believe he was stabbed and defaulted to their base assumptions and base behaviors
Now this is something I think is always ridiculous. Religious exemptions are a nonsense idea.
Either a rule is genuinely important to have and exceptions shouldn't be given out (because it's important!), or the rule isn't actually important and therefore shouldn't exist. Almost everything that has a religious exemption to it should just be gone! Why should you lose more freedoms than someone else just because you believe in a different sky man?
Show me an example of a white Briton (or hell, let's make it easier for you: a white person from anywhere) stabbing a brown man, the police arriving on the scene to find the white aggressor clearly uninjured and the brown man visibly incapacitated, the white man claiming to have been attacked first, and on his word alone, the police handcuffing the visibly incapacitated brown man. If you can show me that, or even something vaguely analogous, I will consider the possibility that there are no real CW aspects to this awful case.
Nowak was not "panicking and freaking out". He was lying on his side, clearly incapacitated, and summoning what little strength he had remaining, he claimed that he'd been stabbed and couldn't breathe. Vickrum's father even told the officers that Nowak kept falling over. I believe the family made up some silly cover story about Nowak attacking Digwa, attempting to flee and cutting himself on a fence. Even if that was how Nowak got injured, it was obvious from the first that he was injured and Digwa wasn't. They should have attempted to render medical care to the clearly injured or incapacitated person. Instead, they put him in cuffs because he allegedly did a racism.
Oh, so in other words there are culture war aspects to this story? You changed your tune from one end of the comment to the other.
In my original comment I gave a whole category of this, domestic abuse victims.
It's common enough to make this mistake that some more experienced officers and departments have adopted the practice of arresting both in response.
Are there really so many domestic abuse cases in which the aggressor is a white man and the victim a brown man? I had no idea there were so many interracial gay couples.
Which, you'll notice, is not what happened here. They put the victim in handcuffs despite him clearly being immobile and incapacitated, and didn't put the aggressor in handcuffs, even though he was standing, lucid, talkative and showing no signs of visible injury at all. If they were unsure of how the altercation had gone down and decided to cuff both parties out of an abundance of caution, that would be one thing. Only cuffing the party who clearly poses no threat, claims to have been stabbed and is acting in a manner entirely consistent with that claim, while declining to cuff the other party? Inexcusable, and you know it.
Are you trying to claim there's a widespread epidemic of white victims being left lying on the ground while colored attackers are left alone? That's not true at all, a case like this is extremely rare. The only reason it's generating so much discussion, just like the Floyd case, is because such extremes are very rare.
The ordinary large majority of cases of police believing an aggressor over the victim are same race friends/family who knew each other beforehand and the aggressor calmly lies while the victim responds "inappropriately" and stupid cops assume calm = innocent while not obeying orders/being emotional/whatever = guilty.
Of course not! This sort of issue being rather common is exactly why some more experienced and smarter officers and departments do dual arrests. Lots of cops are stupid or uncaring and don't do that. It happens often, and is a well documented recurring issue.
No: I asked you for a specific example of the reverse, wherein a brown victim is handcuffed while the white aggressor is left alone. I don't know why you brought up domestic abuse calls, as that doesn't seem remotely relevant to my request.
Okay, but again – why are you bringing this up? What does that have to do with this case?
"This man got stabbed, and when the police came they put him in handcuffs without bothering to cuff the man who stabbed him."
"Yeah. Sometimes when responding to domestic abuse calls, police will arrest both parties just to be safe."
That has literally nothing to do with this case. I don't know why you're bringing it up. It's completely irrelevant. We're not talking about police arresting both parties out of an excess of caution. We're talking about the police arresting one person, and it being the wrong one.
It barely happens in any racial direction!
Almost every bit of violence is done by people who knew each other beforehand. Therefore, almost every case where this stupid assumption gets made is done in cases where people knew each other beforehand.
But also nice changing your words
As you said
You don't think that one of the most common forms of violence regularly having this exact issue is even "vaguely analogous"? I would say it's not even vaguely! It's one of the most common forms of violence!
Yes, cops do that pretty often. Which is why the smarter departments and officers take a dual arrest approach, cause they don't want to make that common mistake. There are still plenty of stupid or lazy or uncaring cops who just assume calm = good.
So, you can't cite an example of the thing I requested? You mean (contrary to what you earlier claimed) this case is unique?
When I said "vaguely analogous" I was referring to the white aggressor/brown victim component of my request. I would have accepted, for example, an instance in which a white aggressor non-lethally assaulted a brown victim, and the police arrested the brown victim while leaving the white aggressor alone. But it seems you can't even produce one of those.
If it's the case that cops arrest the wrong party pretty often, show me one. Show me a case where the cops arrested the wrong person, and that person was non-white while their aggressor was white. Otherwise I don't even know what we're doing here.
The specifics of "random guy attacks another random guy" is pretty rare in general yeah, including across racial boundaries. Most violence is done by people who knew each other beforehand.
The phenomenon of "cops assume calm person who spoke to them first is innocent" is not so rare. That's extremely common and happens across the board. Mostly to "they knew each other beforehand cases" but that's because those are the large large majority of violent crime!
If you want specifically race, sure https://atlantablackstar.com/2023/01/28/colorado-police-arrest-black-woman-after-74-year-old-white-man-objected-to-how-she-parked-at-store-and-scuffled-with-her/
That too of course is rare though, because most violence is done by people who knew each other beforehand. And therefore cases of police arresting the wrong victim in stranger on stranger violence in any racial direction are inherently rare, while the overall phenomenon of police making mistakes is not.
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