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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.
He was clearly provoked (but not racially), and probably a little tipsy.: "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?""
So I think Nowak was a little obnoxious (though I'm willing to overlook that given the murder)
Echoing @Corvos - other than the "stupid" bit - yes, and that's a good thing! In a functional civilisation "tribal savages" should be excluded, executed or imprisoned. People should be free to walk the streets at night, and they should be free to speak to other people they encounter on the street (if the other person is offended, they can be verbally offensive right back to them, ignore them, or just leave the situation) - it would be very bad if the lesson (white) people take away from this is that they should give extra respect and deference to (brown) violent thugs, lest they get Nowaked.
This logic seems to be part of a more general pattern of coping regarding slipping standards:
They imply that the old state of affairs was in some sense fake, and the new (worse) situation is somehow more authentic, or real. Living in a world where you wouldn't have to worry about getting stabbed by some criminal if you got a little tipsy and made an ass of yourself, and then bleed to death in handcuffs due to "two-tier" (i.e. anti-White racist) policing? That's a "bubble", "boring", "basic", ...
The new state of affairs is "real", "enriched" and "vibrant". As if the England of the early 1900s (sans rape gangs, two-tier policing, etc) was some computer simulation broadcast on VR headsets, whilst only the non-European peoples lived life in the real physical world.
What purpose does being able to coexist with "tribal savages" serve? Why is it a bad thing to not be able to live with them? It seems there is no limiting principle to prevent this logic being applied to literally anything that erodes civilisation. How coddled the British are, that they live in brick houses instead of huts like Australian Aborigines. What a bunch of namby-pamby morons - does the modal British person even know how to make a hut?
I'm not sure I would put myself in this category. I think I disagree with the overall idea about how we should organize society around quokka-like behavior. My ideas on this topic are still a bit protean. But they are influenced by FromSCC's stance on rule-based systems being very vulnerable to exploitation. But I'll give it a go.
It seems to me that this rule: "Personal Violence is verboten" is very vulnerable to exploitation by smug assholes who's verbal intelligence allows them to insult, provoke, coordinate violence and other behaviors. They seem to take for granted that this rule exists, and it allows them to succeed at the expense of everyone else. That smacks as unfairness to me. The problem is that rule, is not natural. It only exists due to a strong centralized authority that will "Swing it's dick around". Now the motte/Chesterton's fence for this rule, is that in tries to prevent the interpersonal violence. The anti-violence norm is one of the pillars of mass society. But it is not a natural equilibrium because it's missing the other side of interpersonal violence.
A society needs more than a “no hitting” rule. It also needs a serious norm against provocation without accountability. Otherwise, the society privileges people whose aggression is deniable, verbal, procedural, or reputational. The thug says, “I’ll beat you.” The civilized predator says, “I’ll make everyone hate you, destroy your reputation, get you fired, humiliate you in public, bait you into a reaction, then appeal to the rules when you snap."
This is the cancel culture people claim to hate. It comes across as masculine vs feminine norms in society. We seemed to be in a phase of punishing the masculine and supporting the feminine. I don't think a society can survive without balancing these norms.
And while a lot of this idea is prescriptive, I think a large thrust is actually also descriptive. I think many lay people just intuitively grasp this idea. They grasp that if you verbally start shit out at a bar in the sticks, it is expected that you are going to get beat unless you can back it up with physical might. It's only in more urban, high-class, environments that people seem to not grasp this natural reality.
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