Camera footage of the death of Henry Nowak gives a glimpse into the dark and deceptive world of street policing

This is my latest column, published in The Scotsman on 9th June 2026.

Images of the death of Henry Nowak give a glimpse into the dark and dangerous world of street policing.

The police body cam footage of the death of Henry Nowak was a hard watch even for me who has probably seen more of my share of the gruesome side of life.

A young man breathing his last and begging for help, while police seemed to pay little heed to his pleas while handcuffing him. All the while the real villain Digwa, the man who had stabbed him, flits in and out of shot claiming it was he who had been racially abused and injured. When the dust settled it turned out to be exactly the opposite.

It was Digwa who had attacked young Henry with a long-bladed dagger, following which members of his family covered up the crime and helped concoct a false narrative.  The first police officers did not just walk into a crime scene but a deliberately constructed conspiracy to deceive.  

When examining incidents like these you usually find there is more than one causation. In this case I found three.

First the police attending the scene arrived preconditioned. They had been sent by their control room to a racially motivated attack, and when they got there Digwa and his brother were there to reinforce this version of events. There is a famous maxim which says ‘The eye sees and the ear hears whatever’s in the mind, and it’s true. The officers arrived expecting to find a racist incident, and so they did.

We were always taught to approach any crime scene with a strict adherence to The ABC of investigation. ‘Accept nothing - Believe nothing - Check everything'.

In this case that was not done, at least initially, and with that first misstep everything on that tragic night followed on.

The next question is, was the police action in some way influenced by racial bias? The answer is almost certainly yes. How could it be otherwise? For decades now the police service has been battered by allegations of racism, sometimes justified, often not.  From Stephen Lawrence to George Floyd, from the nonsense of taking the knee, to boot camp diversity training, the onslaught has been remorseless.

Chief Constables have even labelled their own organisations 'Institutionally Racist' smearing everyone from the top to the bottom of The Force.   I never saw evidence of such institutional bias, and if police leaders thought such virtuous breast baring would buy them credit, it didn’t. It only opened the entire service to race baiting lawyers and activists.

Call it two tier policing, call it what you like, but the truth is that many police officers will be naturally cautious around any incident where they may be smeared as racist.

The third factor contributing to the events on the night of Henry Nowaks death can only be described as the fog of street policing. The police body cam footage, which so shocked The Prime Minister is a glimpse into the real raw world of street policing, where it’s dark, wet, and highly charged, and where you have seconds to make a decision that you may have to live with for the rest of your life. And it’s usually the youngest front-line officers who find themselves in these life-or-death situations.

When I was a senior police officer in a large busy Force, I often had to review critical incidents. What always struck me was not how often young officers got it wrong, but how often, in the most difficult and dangerous of circumstances, they got it right.

The trial judge in this case obviously saw something similar when he commented that the officers did the best they could in difficult circumstances.

The police attending the dark and deceptive scene of Henry Nowaks death got it wrong, but the trial judges’ assessment is about right.