The implication being that the officers arrived on the scene and were presented with one white man and one brown man; that the brown man alleged a racial attack against him occurred, and the plod uncritically took the brown man’s side of the story as truth despite the white man bleeding to death.
Fucked up doesn’t even cover it, it’s beyond comprehension and so anyone can float their own slant on it because what the actual fuck
what the actual fuck were these officers thinking?
This is a fair question, but it does have an answer: people often lie to the police about being injured in order to try and get out of restraints. It was too dark for the police to see the chest wound. Novak had a visible, but not serious, facial wound, though, and the police seem to have assumed this was the injury he was referring to.
Additionally, in this case, the actual perpetrator’s brother was the one who’d called the police. It is very unusual for a murderer or an accomplice to call the police (my understanding is we still don’t actually know why the killer’s brother did this). The police believed they were attending a one-sided assault. When they arrived, two ‘witnesses’, including the person who’d called the police, pointed out Novak as the ‘perpetrator’, corroborating one another’s stories. The police didn’t realise they were lying until too late.
I am not excusing any of the above. The police routinely treat suspects poorly and that’s what happened here. However, they did have good reason to believe Novak had committed a crime, and that belief had nothing to do with anyone’s race.
At the point he said he’d been stabbed, he had already been handcuffed. Police carry torches. It would have cost nothing to do a quick check. At best it’s gross negligence.
Police shouldn’t be judging affairs solely by race
White = Bad, Coloured = Good (or vice versa) is stupid and there should just be an unbiased (or awareness of racial prejudices involved, if any) approach towards assessing crime and punishment.
ohulancutash@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
The implication being that the officers arrived on the scene and were presented with one white man and one brown man; that the brown man alleged a racial attack against him occurred, and the plod uncritically took the brown man’s side of the story as truth despite the white man bleeding to death.
Fucked up doesn’t even cover it, it’s beyond comprehension and so anyone can float their own slant on it because what the actual fuck
frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
This is a fair question, but it does have an answer: people often lie to the police about being injured in order to try and get out of restraints. It was too dark for the police to see the chest wound. Novak had a visible, but not serious, facial wound, though, and the police seem to have assumed this was the injury he was referring to.
Additionally, in this case, the actual perpetrator’s brother was the one who’d called the police. It is very unusual for a murderer or an accomplice to call the police (my understanding is we still don’t actually know why the killer’s brother did this). The police believed they were attending a one-sided assault. When they arrived, two ‘witnesses’, including the person who’d called the police, pointed out Novak as the ‘perpetrator’, corroborating one another’s stories. The police didn’t realise they were lying until too late.
I am not excusing any of the above. The police routinely treat suspects poorly and that’s what happened here. However, they did have good reason to believe Novak had committed a crime, and that belief had nothing to do with anyone’s race.
ohulancutash@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
At the point he said he’d been stabbed, he had already been handcuffed. Police carry torches. It would have cost nothing to do a quick check. At best it’s gross negligence.
frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 2 weeks ago
Agreed. As I said, I’m not defending the police.
Yliaster@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Thanks for the summary.
Police shouldn’t be judging affairs solely by race
White = Bad, Coloured = Good (or vice versa) is stupid and there should just be an unbiased (or awareness of racial prejudices involved, if any) approach towards assessing crime and punishment.