A senior police race watchdog has warned that efforts to tackle discrimination within forces remain “too slow, too inconsistent and too poorly embedded”, as controversy intensifies over claims of two-tier policing in Britain.
Abimbola Johnson, who chaired a scrutiny board overseeing police race action plans, said repeated reviews had found progress on anti-racism measures had failed to take root across the service, leaving reforms patchy and unevenly applied.
Her comments come at a politically charged moment, with senior figures facing scrutiny over race guidance that critics say risks embedding differential treatment into frontline policing.
The intervention follows mounting debate over the handling of the murder of Henry Nowak, the 18-year-old university student who was fatally stabbed five times in Southampton by Vickram Digwa, a 23-year-old Sikh man who falsely accused him of racial abuse.
Mr Nowak was also handcuffed by officers as he lay dying in the street — an episode that has become central to accusations that policing decisions are being shaped by flawed assumptions around race and credibility.
The case has reignited scrutiny of the National Police Chiefs’ Council guidance on “racial equity”, which states that fairness does not mean treating all groups in identical terms. Critics have seized on the wording, arguing it risks legitimising unequal treatment in operational decision-making.
Policing minister Sarah Jones has already described elements of the language as “wrong”, and police chiefs have agreed to review the guidance following sustained political pressure.
Ms Johnson rejected claims that efforts to improve outcomes for minority communities amount to preferential treatment, calling the argument “false and dangerous”.
She argued that reforms were being misrepresented for political effect, warning that the current row risked derailing efforts to improve policing standards across the board.
“People of all colours, classes and creeds experience bad policing and poor state decision-making,” she said, insisting that better data, supervision and accountability would improve outcomes for everyone.
However, her intervention is likely to deepen tensions with critics who argue that current policy frameworks already embed differential treatment.
Reform UK and other opposition voices have accused police leadership of promoting guidance that encourages officers to factor race into operational decisions, describing it as evidence of bias within the system.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said it was “shocking” that senior figures continued to defend approaches he said amounted to differential treatment, warning that such policies were “divisive and dangerous”.
Reform UK home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf went further, claiming there was “structural anti-white prejudice” within parts of policing — a charge strongly rejected by senior officials.
Police leaders have insisted the guidance is intended as a statement of values rather than operational instruction, and say it is designed to improve trust in communities where confidence in policing is lower.
Ms Johnson acknowledged that parts of the wording could be misinterpreted and said a review was justified if it clarified how officers should apply principles of fairness in practice.
However, she warned against any “retreat” from reform, arguing that modern policing already takes multiple vulnerability factors into account — including age, disability and mental health — when making decisions.
Asked whether institutional racism still existed within British policing, Ms Johnson said it did, citing what she described as a consistent body of evidence from reviews, leadership admissions and data trends.
The dispute highlights an increasingly fraught debate at the heart of British policing: how to address historical disparities without triggering accusations that the system itself is becoming uneven in its treatment of the public.
For now, both sides appear entrenched — with reform advocates warning of bias, and race reformers warning that political backlash risks halting changes they say are still incomplete.
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