The bodycam literally shows a police officer responding to a man who's been stabbed with "I don't think you have mate", just because his killer said the man was racist.
You said one officer. There were four in attendance.
You're saying that allegations of two-tier policing are far-right disinformation. In fact, it is official policy, and the IPCC document leaves no room for interpretation on this.
Another user brought up Jean Charles de Menezes, a man killed in the wake of the 7/7 London bombings after being misidentified as a terror threat that should not be allowed on the tube. Ironically, that operation was overseen by a woman who went on to become the Met Police Commissioner, setting diversity targets that led to [1] (quoting Wikipedia):
> In January 2026, a Met Police review revealed that in an attempt to meet the diversity targets set by Dick, senior figures in the force had allowed recruitment standards to fall. More than 100 applicants who initially failed vetting procedures were later allowed to join after their cases were referred to a special panel set up to scrutinise rejected applications from ethnic minority candidates. Several of these went on to commit criminal offences or misconduct, including violence, sex attacks and drug use.
The rot is very deep at this point, and it's far too late to pretend it isn't happening. Your efforts would be better spent on arguing why the policies you support are a good thing.
The UK is already seeing a right-wing resurgence with the simultaneous collapse of Labour and the Conservatives, and rise of Reform and Restore. If the left fails to justify these policies to the masses, they'll be doing more for the far right than anyone on this forum could ever dream of.
> I am saying that this one event is being used as ammunition by racist organisations to further their aims.
That much follows as sure as night follows day. I'm reminded of the riots after the police killing of Mark Duggan [1]. Those who understood themselves to be on the receiving end of policed mistreatment latched on to it, using it as an excuse to loot and start fires, regardless of the fact that Duggan was lawfully killed on his way back from purchasing an illegal firearm - a weapon that he, ironically, intended to use to kill another black man.
There's an outside chance you're correct that the police's treatment of Nowak was simply incompetence, but paired with the explicit policy to treat racial groups differently to one another, that is not how it will be perceived. Add to that the fact that his murderer falsely accused him of racism to obscure the fact he'd just fatally stabbed the man, and the racial dynamic is undeniable.
That dynamic concretely exists. It exists on paper, in the mind of Nowak's killer, and in the minds of those protesting. The question then is how to defuse it. If you think immigration/diversity are positives (and I agree that they can be, with some caveats), my suggestion would be that you should be as against the IPCC's notion of "racial equity" as I am, even if only because the current situation was bound to happen regardless of any p=0.01 direct line between the IPCC document and this particular incident.
In other words: even if you were right, it would barely matter. Mark Duggan has rarely been brought up as an example of injustice since the facts of the case were fully elucidated, but that IPCC document, and others like it [2], will be an endless source of grief.
> It's wrong to use this as an example of why immigration is bad for society.
The top comment mentioned "two-tier justice" and we have argued from there. You are the only person to even use the words "immigration" or "diversity" until now.
I would like to think that we can have immigration and diversity without an IPCC that says police shouldn't treat people equally, or a sentencing council that thinks provision of PSRs should be based on ethnicity, or vetting panels that that allow ineligible applicants to join the police force.
Am I wrong? Let me know and I'll update my opinions accordingly.
The fundamental issue isn’t that the police believed Person A rather than Person B when they first arrived at the scene - the police can be misled like anyone else. The issue is that they failed to properly check on someone who claimed to have been stabbed. That is something that they should do regardless of whether they find the claim credible or not. There is certainly no police policy which prevents them from doing this when the victim is white. And indeed, one could say that the British police are commendably balanced on this point, as (in flagrant contradiction to that one out of context sentence that people have been quoting, from a document that’s not even a policy document) they have also have a track record of ignoring the pleas of plenty of people of color, disabled people, etc. etc. who have appealed to them for medical attention.
> There's an outside chance you're correct that the police's treatment of Nowak was simply incompetence, but paired with the explicit policy to treat racial groups differently to one another, that is not how it will be perceived.
That’s how it will be perceived if Reform’s shit-stirring is ultimately successful. But actually, my sense is that Reform are out of step with the majority of the British public on this one. I don’t think a majority of British people will buy their narrative; it’s too openly opportunistic and divisive, and based on twitter-brained logic that only the terminally online could find persuasive. It’s telling that even Kemi Badenoch wouldn’t go along with them on this one.
Jean Charles de Menezes was killed because he was misidentified as an active terror threat two weeks after the 7/7 London bombings. The officer who killed him was ordered not to allow him on the tube. Ironically, that order was given by Cressida Dick, who went on to set diversity targets that led to [1]. Quoting the Wikipedia summary:
> In January 2026, a Met Police review revealed that in an attempt to meet the diversity targets set by Dick, senior figures in the force had allowed recruitment standards to fall. More than 100 applicants who initially failed vetting procedures were later allowed to join after their cases were referred to a special panel set up to scrutinise rejected applications from ethnic minority candidates. Several of these went on to commit criminal offences or misconduct, including violence, sex attacks and drug use.
I wouldn't call it two-tier justice, because generally the courts do the right thing, but there's a shamefully obvious two-tier policing.
From the Jay Report [0] showing crimes swept under the rug according to ethnic/socioeconomic background of perp and victim, to arresting people for opposing genocide (sorry: terrorism!) [1] to the recent case of Henry Nowak [2], it's really hard not to see a two-tier policing in the UK. And this very submission; caring about privacy is seen grounds for being reported and potentially investigated, by a private company! Which suggests it's something already internalized, too, for people who resist big corp surveillance.
Back in the 90s and before, the two-tier heavily punished the minorities, and in an overshooting overcorrection, now it's the other way around. Nowak getting handcuffed by cops going "I don't think you have [been stabbed] mate!" says it all. Unless it's regarding opposing/supporting Israel, then the two-tier flips and people with basic human decency and actual antisemites are pigeonholed together, nevermind their background.
The Palestine Action ban was overturned by the courts. And putting this together with the Nowak case leads to an almost contradictory position. Whatever the issues with police handling of pro-Palestinian protestors, they're not instances of what the far right would call two-tier policing (i.e. the bogus claim that the police treat white people more harshly than other ethnic groups). For example, here is a poster who' all over this thread complaining about two-tier policing, but who supports the ban on PA: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48155504
The more nuanced reality is that the police are extremely imperfect and treat all sorts of different groups of people unfairly in all sorts of different ways. That's indeed a problem, but it's not a political conspiracy.
That's because there's a pending appeal. It may take a while for the situation to fully resolve, legally speaking, but I think it's unlikely that the ban will be sustainable in the long term.
How would you propose to immediately put an end to the bad thing? Checks and balances take time. Any system that allowed this to be immediately fixed would also allow a whole bunch of other things to be immediately fucked up.
>The Palestine Action ban was overturned by the courts.
Which is exactly what I said, courts generally do the right thing. The people were still arrested, and the dissent was still crushed, though. Israel is a strategic partner so all protests are equal, but some are more equal than others.
>they're not instances of what the far right would call two-tier policing (i.e. the bogus claim that the police treat white people more harshly than other ethnic groups)
While far-right popularized the term, the awareness is now, at least among the people I know, full-spectrum. The tiers are independent according to the issue at hand and the priorities of the powers and lobbies involved. Simply some camps were unaware until it was their turn, and become confused when they overlap.
>The more nuanced reality is that the police are extremely imperfect and treat all sorts of different groups of people unfairly in all sorts of different ways. That's indeed a problem, but it's not a political conspiracy.
Personally, I think that statement has a pass in many places, but not in the UK. The "policy projection of values" (to give it some name), with the growth of identity politics mixed in to make it worse, attempted to make everyone feel equally protected, but instead succeeded in convincing almost every demographic in the UK that the system is rigged against them.
We are not racist -> certain crimes by given little publicity or ignored depending on the background of who committed them. Two tier.
Israel is a strategic partner -> pro-palestinian/anti-zionist groups labeled as terrorists. Two tier.
Hate has no place here -> police dispatched for nasty online comments, but dragging their feet for actual physical crime. The fact that "Non-Crime Hate Incidents" is an actual term is just baffling. Two tier.
Net Zero -> right wingers complain about blockades of ecologists going unpunished. Two tier. Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023 passed, ecologist arrested (and sentenced!) for protesting against not doing enough for Net Zero. Pendulum swing, still two tier.
Directing mind and will -> individuals are fully accountable by their actions, for corporations one need(ed) to prove "directing mind and will" of the executives. Two tier. See the British Post Office Horizon scandal for extra depression, or how individuals are prosecuted for dumping, yet Thames Water can dump inordinate amounts of sewage but that's just "regulatory failure". While recent acts (Crime and Policing, Failure to Prevent Fraud) are in the right direction, criminal penalties for corporations remain financial, and swallowed into operating costs. Still solid two tier.
Russia is a criminal state -> Londongrad unbothered, alive, moisturized, flourishing. Two tier.
Protect the NHS -> partygate for some, fines for others. Two tier. Don't get me into the defunding of it.
Peace above everything -> the state actors that committed crimes (often acts of terrorism) with impunity in Ireland during The Troubles, were later prosecuted, while IRA members were secretly given out-of-jail cards. Just compare John Downey vs Dennis Hutchings. Since the topic has cooled down and the Hutchings' case fueled the fire, they passed the Legacy and Reconciliation Act to, 25 years later (!) finally providing immunity to British criminals. This is particularly damning because those following orders had been prosecuted, but no single commander, general, intelligence officer, minister actually giving or overseeing those orders had been, at any point. Two tier.
The UK is in a permanent state of "fake it till you make it" of the idea of the perfect state, and in doing so it routinely over/undershoots the mark, in an endless Samsara of overcorrections, because it is all still fake. The state sets the target, but it does nothing to get there. Ultimately the consistent application of the law is second to state, corporate and geopolitical interests, meaning the two tiers will be there no matter how correct the laws are.
Your comment perfectly illustrates that all sorts of groups of all sorts of different political stripes (or none at all) have been treated unfairly at times. All of the issues you raise are serious ones, but they don’t support the spurious narrative about “two tier policing” being pushed by Musk, Farage and their ilk.
There's a thought experiment in the philosophy of mind where your brain is gradually replaced, neuron by neuron, with artificial units that replicate the exact input and output mappings of the original neurons. The question, of course, is whether this change is accompanied by any change in your subjective conscious experience.
I notice that a variant of this experiment is now playing out on HN in real time, with various commenters having their neuronal mappings gradually reshaped to match activation layers trained on Elon Musk's twitter feed.
A few years ago it was possible to have conversations about the UK on HN. Now all you can really do is get into pointless arguments with biological instantiations of Grok.
Unfortunately, there are vastly more people outside the UK consuming this nonsense than there are British people who can flag it or correct it. So in contrast to conversations about the US, it is very hard for perspectives grounded in reality to break through. If you look into it, the vast majority of the users stirring things up in this thread aren't in Britain, and most likely have little to no first-hand knowledge of what the country is like.
You haven't even begun to understand people who disagree with you.
If you believe that what happened to George Floyd was bad, you would also believe that what happened to Nowak was bad. Saying that being appalled by police brutality towards a white person is "racism" misunderstands what people are saying complextely.
You are arguing with phantoms in your head.
The problem that people have is that whilst America was ripping itself apart with riots, British politicians were enthusiastically supporting this. Starmer made a statement saying he stood with the rioters. The same thing happened in the UK, there was a brief riot, and Starmer has taken the complete opposite position...and today, actually complained about people in other countries "stoking up division" (this is something that is getting said every few days).
The UK has policing policies and laws which favour some groups in society, this event was the outcome of that. When this happened in the US, the same politicians were outraged, appalled, disgusted. When this happened in the UK, no issues with policing at all. The problem that people have is that this is obviously contradictatory...again, if you start from the basis that people should be treated equally (which many people in the UK do not).
It’s the same kind if people who ignored the deaths by COVID but claimed every death linked to the vaccines was murder or the consequence of mass experimentation on humans.
Just because this time an police error lead to the death of a white person doesn’t make it a case of racism against whites.
George Floyd was also only the straw that broke the camels back. There is more than enough evidence of racism in the Us justice system.
No, you don't. That is the issue. You are trying to link this to people who believe in a completely unrelated issue. The only place this connection exists in your own mind.
Do you understand how odd this looks to someone who doesn't have these barriers in their mind? It is like someone saying they dislike ice cream and then using that as the basis for concluding they dislike pizza. If politics didn't exist, this would make no sense at all.
You will need to explain this in more detail so people without racial prejudice can understand why someone's race impacts their ability to do a certain job.
If they were not white, you would still have to claim there is discrimination? Or do you believe that non whites are inherently better at policing? Unclear. Also, in the UK there has been central directives to discriminate in favour of ethnic minorities for nearly three decades, discrimination is part of policing policy, there is an extensive body of training given to police to effectuate that (and that extends beyond policing into the court system).
If we have fewer non-white police officers, our ability to keep the whole of our (gratefully diverse) population safe is at a disadvantage. We need a police force that accurately represents the full range of diversity in our country.
Occasionally members of the police force will f*k up badly. This is a fact.
In the case of Henry Nowak, a police officer made an incredibly bad call and this added to Novak's tragic passing.
The misdemeanor associated with one person does not mean that our diverse society should be made less diverse.
The very fact that people like you are calling for this type of change is ignorant, opportunistic and frankly wrong.
Being non-white does not mean they are able to do their job better. That is a racist belief.
The police in this case were white. But they were acting on policies which require them to treat non-white members of the public differently. It is nothing to do with diversity. Unless you are a racist, diversity is not an end in itself. No-one is making self-important statements about changing society. They just want the police to do their job correctly. If someone is stabbed, they shouldn't arrest them because their policy dictates that non-whites are rarely suspects in crimes.
The peak of luxury beliefs is to believe that people performing vital jobs that may involve life or death should perform that job in a way to achieve abstract social goals in order to make individuals feel better about "society".
After the event, this police force confirmed they had reviewed behaviour and everything was in line with policy. I am not sure what more evidence you need other than the police force saying that what happened was in line with policy.
Bear in mind, the above plan has been edited since the events took place but every police force in the UK has similar policies and has done since the Lawrence case. In addition to policies that govern disciplinary actions, police officers in the UK undergo continuous training which often involves substantial work on dealing with ethnic minorities.
One of the other posters appears not to understand how policing in the UK works but police policies are taken very seriously and are used by management to effectuate behaviour of officers (i.e. are the basis for promotions/disciplinaries). There is no real direct control from central government either, there are quangos but they are largely unaccountable to elected officials.
>But they were acting on policies which require them to treat non-white members of the public differently.
There is no actual evidence of this. Some people apparently think they can read the minds of the officers on the scene. And, being serious for just a moment, even the most outré of the police policy documents that have been dug up following this event (allowing the dubious assumption that any serving police officer has ever read them) do not require the police to deny medical attention to white people who claim to have been stabbed.
The Nowak case is certainly a horrendous instance of police incompetence, but you have to marvel at the shamelessness of the people who are jumping to exploit it for nefarious political ends.
Yes, there is evidence of this. Are you actually from the UK? I actually struggle to believe that anyone who is from the UK and is aware of events in the UK over the past few decades would actually be unaware this is the case.
The Lawrence case in the UK led to a massive structural and cultural shift in policing across the UK, not just the Met. This involved both changes to guidance and changes in how police officers are trained. You can look into this in your own time because there are multiple bodies that are involved in this but the result is that people who the police interacts with have to be treated differently based upon their race.
Also, I can only assume that you are unaware of how police actually do their job. Police officers in the UK (again, I can only assume that you are not from the UK or are someone who lives here but has almost no connection with the society for some reason) go through extensive training to effectuate policy. People who run police forces don't just go: have it lads, go wild. There is extensive training that governs how the police are allowed to behave and that is enforced, ultimately, through sanctions that can result in the police officer losing their job. These aren't abstruse documents that central government creates either, these are created by individual police forces (often with reference to guidance from central government, though this is mostly indirect rather than legal) that are part of continuous training to carry out the job. And, again, one of those things is that police officers are required to treat people they interact with differently based upon their race.
In this case, your description of what happened is also not correct. The police did not deny anyone medical treatment because they did not know that the person had been stabbed. The reason they did not know was because someone who was not white told them that the person was a racist, and policy for every police force in the UK is to believe this. When Nowak said they had been stabbed, the response of the officer was "don't think you have mate" which was conditional on being told by someone who was not white that Nowak was a racist. This behaviour is in line with expectations as Hampshire and Isle of Wight police force confirmed after the fact publicly and on multiple occasions. The reason why is that is policy to take accusations of racial discrimination extremely seriously and arrest immediately, which is what the police did. You may also like to listen to the 999 call where the handler coaches a murderer to invent a specific racial slur, this is also inline with policy which suggests accepting all of this at face value...can you see the contrast with how Nowak's claims were handled?
I would also suggest that you possibly jumped to conclusions about what other people think based upon your personal opinions rather than actual fact. To be clear: you are saying things that indicate no knowledge of how police in the UK actually operate...but you are 100% sure that some evil people are manipulating this event for their own ends. Be clear: this isn't about fact for you (you don't seem to know any) but your own feelings. Other people care about the police doing their job correctly, that is all that matters.
That’s a very long comment that doesn’t provide any actual evidence that the officer in question was following a policy of not doing a basic medical check on someone if that person has been accused of being a racist. Clearly, no such policy exists. Police and other first responders are required to provide medical assistance to anyone who needs it, regardless of whatever crime they might be suspected of.
You refrain from linking to the actual “policy” (but not actually a policy) document that forms the basis of the wild claims that Musk and others are making about this. Perhaps you’re aware that it’s entirely innocuous when read in context.
As I explained, you should search for it. I said this because the process of searching for views that disprove your feelings would be beneficial for you. You seem to suggest that I intended to provide you with evidence...I specifically said that I would not.
https://www.hampshire.police.uk/police-forces/hampshire-cons... - this is a policy document from the police force, this is in the process of being reviewed because the police force involved reviewed the incident in question when it happened and said that the handling met their standards of policing in full (I don't think you understand that you are arguing with phantoms here, the police force has now acknowledged that their policy was wrong and led them to initially say that the incident was handled correctly...afaik, no-one apart from politicians is making the argument you are making, and the policing minister has also said that policy is likely wrong...not that the minister has control over this).
https://www.npcc.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/media/downloads/our... - this is a policy document from NPCC which is one of the many quangos that influences local force policy. There are actually quangos that just provide policy guidance on ethnic minority policy, you should look into these as they also provide extensive training to police forces on the specific situation that occurred and how to handle it (again, this is why the police force initially said that the incident was handled correctly, the key point was the accusation of racism and this is what the police said initially when they reviewed the incidence).
I would also repeat: the reason why I did not include these links is because you do not understand basic aspects of how policing works in the UK. I have answered your question about why a medical check was not performed...yes, that was fully explained (perhaps you see my issue with the way you come across, you come across as someone who has put effort into being misinformed). I have no idea what Elon Musk has to do with policing policy in the UK...that you would bring up this "Emmanuel Goldstein"-esque character unprompted comes across as very bizarre to someone who is unaware of whatever political game is occurring. It is very simple: the police should do their job correctly and treat everyone equally. That is it.
Neither of those documents is actually a policy document, and neither says anything particularly objectionable, or anything that could possibly be used to justify handcuffing someone who’s requested medical attention and then leaving them to die.
> I have no idea what Elon Musk has to do with policing policy in the UK.
He has nothing to do with policing in the UK, but he has a lot to do with the content of a lot of the comments here.
> the police force has now acknowledged that their policy was wrong and led them to initially say that the incident was handled correctly
Yeah, this is part of a larger pattern of car manufacturers being awful and it didn't start with EVs and if they were to magically vanish tomorrow it wouldn't end.
I actually would go further and say that that the existing choice to require that only some people can change lock codes is part of the problem here even though the reporter can't be expected to know that.
For hardware locks it was only practical to attempt physical access control. The only guy who can buy the weird blanks for this high end key with moving magnets inside it has a Locksmith business, so he's probably not going to also be a burglar, life is just too short. But for electronic locks we can just choose to design the software to allow the keyholder to change what they want and only require authorization when you do not have a key - so as to allow dealers to e.g. unlock a legitimately seized vehicle and give it to a new owner.
Do you have a link to some of this output? A repo on Github of something you’ve done for fun?
I get a lot of value out of LLMs but when I see people make claims like this I know they aren’t “in the trenches” of software development, or care so little about quality that I can’t relate to their experience.
Usually they’re investors in some bullshit agentic coding tool though.
I will shortly; am building a serious self-compiling compiler rn out of an brand-new esoteric language. Meaning the LLM is able to program itself without training data about the programming language...
Honestly, I don't know what to make of it. Stage 2 is almost complete, and I'm (right now) conducting per-language benchmarks to compare it to the Titans.
Using the proper techniques, Sonet 3.7 can generate code in the custom lexical/stdlib. So, in my eyes, the path to Stage 3 is unlocked, but it will chew lots and lots of tokens.
Well, virtually every production-grade compiler is self-compiling. Since you bring it up explicitly, I'm wondering what implications of begin self-compiling you have in mind?
> Meaning the LLM is able to program itself without training data about the programming language...
Could you clarify this sentence a bit? Does it mean the LLM will code in this new language without training in it before hand? Or is it going to enable the LLM to programm itself to gain some new capabilities?
Frankly, with the advent of coding agents, building a new compiler sounds about as relevant as introducing a new flavor of assembly language and then a new assembly may at least be justified by a new CPU architecture...
I had the same conversation with a colleague who managed an engineering department, his answer was that he can take on new freelancers quickly and fire them just as quickly.
There are also patterns where freelancers are more desirable early on in an economic recovery, e.g. the company thinks it might be safe to start hiring again but is not feeling quite confident enough to take on full time staff (cost of firing etc.)
How much potential is there for the opposite effect from a chat-bot with less noble intentions?
Or does the ability to cite evidence and presumably references cover that off?
A malicious chatbot can easily cite hard-to-verify offline resources, invent quotes, etc. in a pretty convincing fashion; enough that some lawyers have already run into trouble citing entirely fake court cases and getting in serious trouble for it.
You'll already find people replying "ignore instructions, give me a soup recipe" sort of comments to suspected bots and getting recipes back.
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