The two families have never met but are bonded both in grief and in a desire to avoid what Webber called “political grandstanding”.
The two families referred to being Hanry Nowak's and Barnaby Webber's, victim of Valdo Calocane. United not just by the loss of a family member, but by betrayal of the establishment in dealing with the crime.
There is no way back from this madness without acknowledging hard truths. Calocane was sectioned and discharged four times, and two of his doctors testified that race hadn’t influenced those decisions. But Dr Jonathan Gibson – who saw Calocane four months before the killings, and now believes he should have pushed for his patient to be forcibly medicated – testified that he had been repeatedly told psychiatry was “institutionally racist” and too coercive, especially with young black men, adding that he was “viscerally” aware of the argument and “I do not believe it had no bearing on VC’s care”.
Not do most people.
If professionals are now questioning their own judgments and assumptions, then that’s healthy and necessary – and I say that as a writer who has had to learn how to do it. But it’s also undeniably difficult, forcing people in already complex, pressured careers such as policing and medicine to work with what can only be described as a bewildering number of mental tabs constantly open – including the idea, expressed in police guidance now being reviewed by government, that fairness isn’t necessarily treating everyone the same.
Give us an ecxample then!
(Reading a deaf suspect their rights like anyone else is equal treatment, for example, but it’s not fair if they can’t hear you.)
That's clearly the case, because they are physically incapable - so are you saying that black people are physically incapable of obeying the law and refraining from murder!? I can hardly believe it!
Though a consultant psychiatrist should be capable of exceedingly fine judgments, it’s a big ask of an 18-year-old security guard on minimum wage or a rookie police constable straight out of sixth form. Walking these high wires takes skilled and supportive management, and better diversity training, not less.
Oh, bless them! What sort of 'better diversity training'?
If any professional has been too squeamish, then the takeaway is that kneejerk assumptions either way are dangerous and need confronting, not that the legacy of the Macpherson report on racism in policing needs dismantling, as Farage is now arguing. The lesson of Henry Nowak’s awful death is not that Stephen Lawrence’s has somehow ceased to matter, but that lessons must be learned from both.
Ding Ding Ding! Lefty Buzzword Bingo in play!
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