Zia Yusuf brands UK police ‘institutionally racist’ due to ‘anti-white prejudice’published at 09:59 BST
09:59 BST
Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf is also asked about his party’s response to Henry Nowak’s death – and whether Reform has used it to make a political argument despite the Nowak family saying they don’t want his death to cause division.
“The last words Henry Nowak heard on this planet Earth was his rights being read to him, as he was handcuffed, as he bled to death, and his murderer and his family were standing over him,” Yusuf says in response.
He adds that an accusation of racism “was taken more seriously by Hampshire Police than Henry’s repeated statements that he had been stabbed”.
Yusuf describes UK police as “institutionally racist”, and says there is “structural anti-white prejudice”.
He says Reform’s response has respected the family’s wishes, “because there is nothing more divisive than two-tier policing” – and Reform is campaigning against that division.
Kuenssberg asks if there is any evidence that the circumstances of Nowak’s death were a result of “anti-white racism, rather than just police incompetence”.
Yusuf says that when the killer’s family called police claiming Nowak had been racist, they were believed, despite there being “zero burden of proof for that claim”.
“If you tell police officers that there will be, quote, ‘zero tolerance for any form of racism, or defiance of these guidelines, and you must prioritise the concerns of ethnic minorities, and you must not treat everybody the same, and you must not be colour-blind’… then the logical conclusion is what you saw on the bodycam”.