Kemi Badenoch right to call for police training changes after Henry Nowak and Luke Salmons case: The Yorkshire Post says
Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has made a powerful argument that “institutional incompetence” guiding the training given to police officers needs to change.
Her argument, which claims officers are given training which is “well-meaning but totally wrong-headed [and] lacking in common sense”, has been made in light of the appalling death of Henry Novak who was handcuffed and initially not believed about having been stabbed after his attacker falsely claimed the teenager was a racist.
But her point is also encapsulated by the case of former North Yorkshire Police PCSO Luke Salmons who was dismissed for gross misconduct and barred from policing after raising questions about the actions of Hamas during diversity training sessions including one in which he claims external trainers repeatedly chanted that “Islam is a religion of peace”.
His dismissal came despite the sessions being explicitly presented as forums where challenging questions could be asked by officers. He has now successfully appealed the ruling and won a legal settlement from the force.
North Yorkshire Police has now accepted he did not breach any behavioural standards, let alone commit gross misconduct, but says Mr Salmons “had made colleagues feel uncomfortable and unsettled at times”.
His case underlines Ms Badenoch’s point that in many forces “common sense is disappearing” with officers “juggling race action plans, political pressure and activist expectations”.
Her suggested remedy is that there is genuine equality under the law in the way every citizen is treated, the removal of identity politics from public bodies and ensuring police forces “act fairly, competently and under rules that work for everyone”.
This would be a sensible step, likely to be welcomed by many police officers.