Protesters chanted “I can’t breathe” and threw bins at police in Southampton on Tuesday (2 June) after footage emerged showing murdered teenager Henry Nowak being arrested as he lay dying from a stab wound.
Police bodycam footage released the same day showed an officer dismissing the 18-year-old as he told officers he had been stabbed, before handcuffing him as he cried out: “I can’t breathe.”
An officer then told Nowak he was under arrest and read him a police caution as the teenager lay motionless on the floor.
The footage, filmed in December 2025, was released after Vickrum Digwa, 23, was jailed for life on Monday for murdering the student with a ceremonial knife.
Digwa, a Sikh, falsely claimed that Nowak had racially abused him and knocked off his turban when officers arrived at the scene.
The response of officers who attended the incident in Southampton has provoked outrage across the UK and reignited debate about the role of race in public policy.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the footage of Nowak’s arrest raised “serious questions for the police”.
Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch has questioned whether police anti-racism training influenced officers’ response to the incident.
She told the breakfast television programme Good Morning Britain on Tuesday that “anti-racism training” was “reverse discrimination” and needed to be “rooted out” of the police and other institutions.
Nigel Farage, leader of the right-wing populist party Reform UK, which is currently leading in opinion polls, said the police response demonstrated how the rights of ethnic minorities were being prioritised over those of white British people.
"The fear of being called racist was greater than dealing with Henry Nowak’s murder," he said in a statement.
"We should respond to this with pure cold rage,” he added.
The protests in Southampton on Tuesday drew hundreds of people, including far-right activist Tommy Robinson, who addressed the crowd and accused the police of institutional racism.
The murder has also sparked discussion about whether Sikhs in the UK should continue to benefit from a legal exemption allowing them to carry a kirpan, a ceremonial dagger, in public.
Reform UK has pledged to introduce an “Equal Treatment Act” if elected, which would end the exemption and ban police race action plans and DEI (Diversity, Equality and Inclusion) practices.
Digwa used a larger ceremonial dagger to kill Nowak, rather than a kirpan.
Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, an MP from Starmer’s governing Labour Party, has described calls to ban the kirpan as “opportunistic”.
The UK has the world’s third-largest Sikh population after India and Canada, with around 530,000 Sikhs living in the country.
Nowak died shortly after being handcuffed by police. Once officers realised he was injured, they removed the handcuffs and began CPR in an attempt to resuscitate him.
Hampshire Police has apologised for the incident.
In a separate statement on Tuesday, the force said one of the officers involved in the arrest had resigned.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), which oversees complaints against police in England and Wales, has launched an investigation into the actions of the officers who attended the scene.
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