Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer says there are “serious questions for police” after the release of bodycam footage showing how officers responded to the murder of Henry Nowak.
Vickrum Digwa, 23, was jailed on Monday for a minimum of 21 years for stabbing the teenager with a 21cm (8in) blade he said he carried as part of his Sikh faith.
Bodycam footage shows the 18-year-old Southampton university student being handcuffed and telling police “I can’t breathe” after Digwa lied to officers at the scene of the stabbing, claiming he had been the victim of a racist attack.
On Tuesday evening, several hundred people gathered in Southampton, with clashes between protesters and riot police.
Police chiefs are re-examining anti-racism commitments that suggested officers should treat ethnic minorities differently in order to ensure equality of outcomes.
The National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) said it was listening to concerns raised by MPs and would make changes where needed.
Last year the NPCC published a document of “anti-racism commitments”. Racism, it said, was a “very real issue in policing” and achieving equality of outcomes for people from different ethnic groups did not mean “treating everyone ‘the same'” but responding to their specific “circumstances and experiences”.
It is not formal policy or training but the Conservatives said it was wrong to treat people differently based on the colour of their skin.
A source close to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said the wording in the document was clumsy and the Chair of the NPCC, Chief Constable Gavin Stephens, said “where needed we can and will make changes”.
Mahmood described the unrest in Southampton as “completely unacceptable”.
She said the Nowak family had made a “powerful call” on Monday to “not let Henry’s death be used to create further division, hatred or tension”.
“There can be no justification for hijacking this tragedy to stir up violence and disorder,” she added.
Speaking to broadcasters earlier on Tuesday, Sir Keir said the bodycam footage was “really harrowing” and he had “felt sick watching it”.
The question of “how accusations of racism informed decision making” must be addressed, he said.
Police watchdog the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said an ongoing investigation into the police force’s actions was expected to report within the next three months.
Sir Keir said he would not rule out a wider inquiry into the matter.
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said the arrest footage was “awful” and there had been “multiple failures”. She challenged Sir Keir to respond more strongly, comparing the Southampton case with the killing of George Floyd in the US in 2020.
“I haven’t really seen enough of a response,” she told BBC Newsnight. “I’d like to see more.”
Badenoch said that when the prime minister had been Leader of the Opposition “and the George Floyd incident happened, they were taking the knee for something that happened in another country”.
“I want them to take as seriously what is happening in this country, what they did with George Floyd,” she said.
The death of the African-American man in police custody sparked the Black Lives Matter protest movement.
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Earlier, Mahmood called out a “dangerous undercurrent” in the wake of the killing, which she said was leading to threats.
A police officer was “forced to relocate to protect himself and his family” after being wrongly identified online as being involved in the case, she said.
In an address to the House of Commons, Mahmood warned against opposition MPs politicising the case.
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage told reporters he had a sense of “cold rage” at the treatment of Nowak and labelled it evidence of a “two-tier Britain”.
“A false accusation of racism counted higher at that moment than someone that was dying,” he said.
In a statement to the House of Commons, shadow home secretary Chris Philp said the “police appeared more concerned with the accusation of racism… than they were with helping Henry”.
Badenoch told Newsnight: “I think, that had the murderer been white, they would have asked a few more questions but they jumped to a conclusion.”
Responding to Farage’s remarks, she said: “What we don’t need is rage, because what rage will do is cause someone else’s child to get hurt.”
Mahmood said that while it was for the IOPC to determine the facts of the specific case, “everyone in this country is equal before the law”.
The prime minister’s official spokesman said there was “no such thing as two-tier policing”.