Simon Dorrington stood alone on the driveway where Henry Nowak died, his mobility scooter beside him and a bouquet of flowers freshly laid against a tree. Tears hovered in his eyes. He had wanted to join the protest the day before, but with a prosthetic leg he felt physically unable. When he first saw the police body camera footage of Nowak slumped on the ground, he told me, he felt sick. Struggling not to cry, he said of the police: 'I hate them. A couple of officers walked by and I just called them racist.' Before Nowak's death, he had not resented the authorities, but he now feels they are 'anti-white'. He had come to pay respects to the dead 18-year-old but also to kick against his nation's decline. 'You let people come in with dinghies but there's places we can't go. They get gas, electric, but we're struggling to pay. Why?'
The murder that has shattered Dorrington's faith in the police occurred on 3 December last year. Nowak was walking home alone after a night out with friends when Vickrum Digwa, 23, used a 21cm (8in) blade he said he carried as part of his Sikh faith to stab the student repeatedly. As Nowak lay dying, Digwa filmed him and told him he had not been injured, then called police and claimed he had been assaulted. When officers arrived, they handcuffed and arrested the wounded student. When he said he had been stabbed, a policeman replied: 'I don't think you have mate.' Digwa was later jailed for life with a minimum of 21 years. The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed he was born British.
“A protester says he hates police after Henry Nowak's murder, as Downing Street condemns JD Vance's comments”
Violent protests erupted in Southampton on Tuesday after the release of bodycam footage showing Nowak handcuffed as he lay dying. The unrest drew a response from US vice-president JD Vance, who posted on X blaming the death on the 'mass invasion of migrants' and said the 'only response' was 'righteous anger'. He wrote that Nowak died 'the same way a civilisation dies: abandoned and handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him'. Downing Street hit back, a spokesman saying the Nowak family 'said they do not want his death to be used to create further division'. 'Our politics should bring people together even in the most terrible of circumstances. That is who we are as a country,' the statement added.
The Minister for Children and Families, Josh MacAlister, also criticised Vance on BBC Radio 4's Any Questions programme. 'There are people who are trying to import that kind of toxic politics here into the UK and I don't want to have anything to do with it,' he said. 'I don't think we need advice from American politicians... [on] how to have effective policing here in the UK.' On Friday, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch called for an 'independent rapid review' into the circumstances surrounding Nowak's death, writing to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer that 'the questions raised about what followed are of profound public importance'. The Independent Office for Police Conduct is already investigating police officers' behaviour, while an inquest jury is to consider next year whether 'any act or omission by police officers' or delay in treatment contributed to the death.
On Sunday, several days after Digwa was convicted, members of White Vanguard, a neo-Nazi cell that has attempted to capitalise on anti-asylum protests across Britain, laid flowers outside Portswood police station, close to the murder scene. For Dorrington, Nowak's death has shifted his understanding of the police, perhaps irreparably.