June 2026: Differential treatment

Dear StopWatchers,

It’s been another eventful month in British policing, marked by the end of a political era… or epoch… or age… actually, no. Let’s call it a moment.

As such, you might expect us to reflect upon the impact of certain political events on state of policing and to speculate over what it all may mean going forward.

But this newsletter is not about what our government has been up to lately, or even over the last couple of years, such as passing legislation endorsing police crackdowns in town centres to enforce a respect for authority; or proposing changes to established legal precedents to protect police units from scrutiny following misconduct scandals whilst painting it as an exercise in raising accountability; or wilfully misunderstanding a perfectly clear conception of racial equity to erode nominal protections for constituencies of racialised peoples that exist to offset persistent prejudices in the criminal justice system; or giving police ‘the confidence’ to do the job of ratcheting up state surveillance and arrests of any one protesting political injustices home and abroad.

When it comes to policing and criminal justice issues, for all the talk of change, there is no indication that current events will have any bearing on government personnel or policy. Can’t wait to be proven wrong, but we don’t think we will be.

Instead, we will focus on handcuffing.

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On 02 June, news broke of the murder of 18-year-old Henry Nowak in Southampton (BBC News). University student Nowak suffered stab wounds to his legs and a fatal wound to his heart from an 8-inch blade used by the perpetrator, Vickrum Digwa. Bodycam footage of the incident released by Hampshire police sparked national debate over the errors of officers who attended the scene. As his father summarised:

“Henry told officers that he could not breathe nine times. He told them that he had been stabbed four times. Henry was pulled across the gravel, his hands forced behind his back and he was placed in handcuffs.”

From the outset, certain political actors steered discourse over the Southampton murder (and a subsequent attack in Belfast) onto race war territory, leading to riots. Many media outlets appeared to take their arguments at face value, with one commentator even belittling the pleas of Henry Nowak’s father against the politicisation of his son’s death (Times Radio, 03 Jun).

Few critics questioned why the officers would engage in handcuffing an evidently vulnerable person before providing first aid. Even those who did seemed less interested in holding the police to account for failures in procedure than to the idea of anti white sentiment in the force. Take MP Sir Julian Lewis’s contribution to a subsequent House of Commons debate, for instance.

Sir Lewis asks 2 questions, but only makes a policy demand of the latter. The former is an expression of bafflement: how could handcuffing-on-arrival possibly be police protocol? Well, plenty of marginalised and racialised peoples know from bitter experience that non-arrest handcuffing is increasingly routine practice, contrary to ethical guidance requiring the action to be reasonable, proportionate, and necessary and rooted in an objective basis^*.

And if the Independent Office for Police Conduct was to conduct a proper investigation into the use of this tactic – as home secretary Shabana Mahmood promised (sort of) – this fact would be writ large in much the same way that we already know officers use force in almost half of incidents they attend where no violence has occurred, and Black people are subjected to use of force roughly 3.5 times more often than white people in England and Wales (Hampshire police stop Black people 5 times more often than white people). So there’s your differential treatment, Julian.

Besides, even if the home secretary could direct every officer in the country to undertake first aid training, there’d be no meaningful change in police callouts of this nature. This is why the most plausible explanation for the police’s immediate response to the tragic act of senseless violence is that compassion and de-escalation are not and will never be police priorities. In fact, that is not even what Mahmood or the race war agitators want from the police. They simply want officers to use force on those who deserve it.

In contrast, the claim that forces have ‘adopted the language of activism’ (Guardian, 22 Jun) in policy documents is only plausible if you believe that: a) the police as an institution has been force-fed nothing but critical race theory for the last 40 years; and b) the objective of doing so is to make ethnic minorities feel comfortable at the expense of white Brits, which is one hell of a misreading, to say the least.

What’s more likely is – to paraphrase Abimbola Johnson, who chaired the scrutiny board overseeing the ill-fated police race action plan – adherence to DEI targets and equity guidelines is a myth (London Loves Business, 08 Jun).

Lee Broadbent@leembroad

It’s more likely that the actions of the officers were driven by positive arrest policies - which have replaced investigate to arrest with arrest to investigate in order to meet central targets - then any DEI policy or police race action plan which most of the front line will not

Lewis Goodall @lewis_goodall

There may well be serious questions about policing and equality guidance. But there is still no conclusive evidence that anti-discrimination policy caused the actions of officers the night Henry Nowak died. But half of British politics is acting as if there is. Piece from me on

11:17 AM · Jun 10, 2026 · 7.36K Views

11 Replies · 5 Reposts · 35 Likes

^* discretionary power over the use of handcuffs is derived from section 117 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 and section 3 of the Criminal Law Act 1967.

A postcode lottery of police transparency: A Misconduct999 review of all 46 police forces in England and Wales has uncovered dramatic differences in how misconduct information is retained and published, with some forces maintaining archives dating back to 2016 while others appear to have no publicly accessible historical archive at all (01 Jun).
Of the 46 police forces reviewed, 12 maintained archives stretching back five years or more, including some dating back to 2016. Six maintained more limited archives, while 28 appeared to have no publicly accessible historical archive of misconduct outcomes. That means more than six in ten forces reviewed did not appear to maintain a publicly accessible historical archive, while only around one in four retained records stretching back five years or more.

Police told to stop using AI in court statements over accuracy: Police forces across England and Wales have been ordered to halt the use of artificial intelligence tools in court statements and other criminal justice tasks after concerns emerged that inaccurate AI-generated content could compromise legal proceedings (IBTimes UK, 08 Jun).
The intervention comes amid growing scrutiny of generative AI systems and their tendency to produce convincing but false information, known as ‘hallucinations.’ Officials say any technology used within the justice system must meet exceptionally high standards of accuracy before it can be deployed in legal processes.

UK police officer under criminal investigation over alleged use of AI: Derbyshire police have launched a criminal investigation into an officer for allegedly using AI to create evidence and perverting the course of justice. It is thought to be the first known case of its kind in the UK (ChannelCo, 15 Jun).
Derbyshire police told the Financial Times: “A criminal investigation has been launched into an allegation of perverting the course of justice after the alleged use of AI systems by an officer to create evidential material in a number of cases.

Teenager wrongly arrested wins race discrimination claim against the Met: A teenager who was wrongly arrested for the attempted murder of his mother minutes after she had tried to kill herself won a race discrimination claim against the Met (Guardian, 18 Jun).
A county court heard that Daryl McLune was arrested and taken to Wandsworth police station in south west London, where he was held for 23 hours.
The court also heard that he remained in handcuffs for 5 hours until police took forensic samples from his hands, which were never processed or submitted.
A jury believed the Met to have discriminated against McLune, who was 16 at the time, because he was Black.
They also found that:

• the Met had not proved the officer who arrested the teenager at the scene “honestly suspected” he had committed the offence of attempted murder.

• the Met had failed to convince them that it was “reasonable and necessary” to keep him handcuffed until forensic samples were taken.

• although his handcuffing had not involved excessive force, his treatment as a whole was a breach under the European convention on human rights, not to be subjected to “inhuman or degrading treatment”.

Following the verdict, McLune said:

“I am pleased and grateful to the jury for considering my case so carefully and for reaching the decision that they have.
I have waited a long time for this vindication. And while I will never forget these events, having the jury confirm I should never have been arrested will, I hope, help me to try to move on and recover from this incident.”

Eyes on all Londoners: The Met police plans to scale up its use of surveillance technologies across the capital, including deploying more drones and installing static facial recognition cameras in selected spots across central London in ‘the fight against criminals’ (Guardian, 23 Jun).
The announcement comes as legal campaigning group JUSTICE warns of the urgent necessity to implement regulation to protect civil liberties. In the latest episode of their podcast, deputy legal director Ellen Lefley states that not a single law even mentions artificial intelligence by name.

It also coincides with Met police chief Sir Mark Rowley’s claim that he has had to cut frontline services as a direct result of row over the tech company Palantir’s bid to run its services. London mayor Sir Sadiq Khan has granted the force an extra 12 months to run a pilot while it sorts out a permanent long-term supplier (ITV News, 25 Jun).

Times Radio@TimesRadio

Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Sir Mark Rowley has revealed the Deputy Mayor of London’s decision to block Palantir’s contract has led him to make the decision to “cut frontline services”. @KateEMcCann

7:58 AM · Jun 11, 2026 · 16.8K Views

7 Replies · 15 Reposts · 51 Likes

More Charing Cross police station sackings confirmed: A disciplinary panel has dismissed 2 more Met police officers over comments glorifying the use of force against detainees at Charing Cross police station in central London (BBC News, 24 June).
PCs Kheava Gould-Ryan and Fernando Santos Dos Santos were sacked without notice following misconduct hearings this week, the force said. They are the latest officers to lose their jobs following evidence gathered during an undercover BBC Panorama investigation. The Met said 10 officers had been dismissed as a result.

Exposé of predictive policing experiment in Bristol: As UK police embrace the AI revolution, a WIRED investigation reveals the messy inside story of the Think Database experiment between Bristol City Council and Avon and Somerset police (25 Jun). Featuring Bristol Copwatch’s John Pegram.

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