Policing, Southgate

Hello, I'm Anita Arnindan. Thank you for downloading BBC Radio 4's Any Answers, the sister programme to any questions. Good afternoon. Welcome to Any Answers. So, Henry Novak, 18 years old, a university student with the whole of his life ahead of him, starved in Southampton in December and this week his killer was convicted of murder.

And that body cam footage of Henry's final moments, it was made public and it was met with shock, horror and also fury. Now he'd been falsely accused of racism by the man who stabbed him and when police arrived they arrested Henry. You might have heard in the trail that I said he was handcuffed by police who should have saved him. That was careless talk because we do know from the judge

that his injuries were not survivable. However quickly he received first aid, CPR or expert medical treatment. But it has opened a much wider debate about policing. That footage really shocked the country. It sparked protests. It split politicians from Kirsten Armatt and Nigel Farage. So the question that is posed on the programme that I'm posing to you, do our police anti-racism

policies do more good than harm or more harm than good? I'd really love to hear from you and I'd really particularly like to hear from police officers serving or retired on this 03700-100444. Gareth Southgate has a BBC documentary out this week. It's on the crisis. Facing young men and boys falling behind in schools struggling to find work, looking in the wrong places for

male role models. Now he says, we just need to teach boys differently to girls. I wonder if if you agree and if you're a teacher, a parent of sons, get in touch with us this afternoon, 03700-10444. The Prime Minister has his WhatsApp on instant delete. The government now admits it doesn't even know if those messages relating to Peter Mandelson can be recovered. I wonder

if this troubles you or is this just the way politics is done these days, 03700-10444. And can we talk about, well, maybe something that we talked about in great detail last week and the prospects of the young, is the minimum wage the enemy of young people's employment? So a lot to talk about, A3700, 100, 444. But the thing that you most want to talk about

is policing and that Henry Novak case. And Louise Field, you are our first caller this afternoon. Welcome. Hello. Thank you, Anita. Good to be on. Well, very good to have you. Now, so there's been a lot said in cold, hot rage, whatever

way you want to put it, and a lot of internal introspection about policing. What do you see from where you are? Well, the way I see it is that certain people, politicians in particular, are trying to turn this terrible tragedy to their advantage. And I think there's been an oversight in not looking at actually what the police were faced with when they received

this call. So just to lay that out, the police would have received a call that said somebody had been racially abused. They did not receive a call saying that someone had been stabbed. So I don't know this, but I imagine from that perhaps less experienced officers went, perhaps not quite such urgency as you would have in the case of a stabbing and an

ambulance not called, which all would have happened if they had known it was a stabbing. We all know that the brother of the murderer lied when he called, when he spoke to the police. So that's the first thing to say. And that hasn't been discussed at all. That's nothing to do with two-tier policing. That's how police respond to the situation they're

called to. So they're called to a situation where they're expecting to see two lads facing off each other, possibly racist abuse. They don't know that those are stabbing. So, and I think the other point I want to make, I was very glad to hear you correct what you said earlier. Yeah, I apologise for that. That's sort of careless, live audio. Yeah, yeah.

Because if that police officer were to hear that, I imagine he feels terrible already, because he made a terrible mistake, he made a terrible misjudgment. But that, again, it's not to do with two-tier policing, so-called. That's the judgment of the situation that he walked into.

So we've got, I mean, we've got people agreeing with you already. James Atkhurst has been in touch saying, has anyone considered the feelings of the police officers who found Henry Novak? They were just doing their job.

They didn't expect to find a dying man. They made a terrible mistake, which they will have to live with for the rest of their lives. A very similar point to that which you are making.

However, we have heard in the political ferrari that followed accusations that you know what this post McPherson people are too careful in the police. And when it comes to incidents involving ethnic minorities, they tend to believe the minorities. That's what has been put forward.

And you will have heard that coming from reform. So evidence of that. I mean, this case, this case of Henry Novak is not evidence of that. This is evidence that the police sometimes walk into situations that are unclear.

That's all it tells us. It does not tell us that they walked into that situation and immediately assumed that Henry Novak was the aggressor. It doesn't tell you that.

And I think what I would say is the reason we had, by the way, it's DEI in this country, not EDI in this country, not DEI training, is because there was a necessary correction to historical racism, institutional racism in the police force. We know that because of Stephen Lawrence. And do we want to go back to the days of Stephen Lawrence? I'll

just point out, actually, it's astonishing to think now that it was the Daily Mail who exposed Stephen Lawrence as white murderers. Stephen Lawrence's murder wasn't investigated because Stephen Lawrence was black.

That's two-tier policing. And we had a corrective to that with unconscious bias training, anti-racism training. I was in the civil service.

I've done that training. Everybody needs to do that training. Because we were... So what would happen if you didn't?