The family of Henry Nowak have given their first interview since the teenager’s murder last December. Speaking to ITV News, they describe how they may have been “manipulated in their darkest hours” by officers covering up aspects of Henry’s case. The family also say that police were, for too long, keen to paint Henry as the aggressor in a racially-motivated assault, even questioning them on his political views and their own. The Nowaks want the truth: why was their son treated so appallingly, handcuffed by officers even as he bled to death? What were the reasons, both immediate and structural?

As ever, the interests of the victim and the system may not fully align. The Nowak case, for police watchers, raises many uncomfortable issues that, in the honored Whitehall tradition, may be kicked into the long grass of multiple overlapping reviews, investigations and committee hearings. Firstly, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has announced an independent review into the case. Led by the Conservative former lord chancellor Alex Chalk, the report will be published in two phases. The first will concentrate on “missed opportunities” around information the state had on Henry’s murderer, Vickrum Digwa, and how it was managed. This will also include consultation with the Sikh community. The second part of the review will conclude after the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has completed its investigation into the Hampshire officers who attended the scene.

Chalk’s appointment is smart politics. Not only does it appear non-partisan to appoint a Conservative, but many issues salient to police ineptitude are attributable to the governments in which Chalk served. Mahmood has, in effect, asked him to plunge a dagger into his own side. Will Chalk go there, or stick to other, less contentious issues? The former lord chancellor has assured the BBC he would consider whether “old-fashioned incompetence” was behind police failure, or a “sort of reticence” from institutions to intervene sooner “based upon a misplaced sense of cultural sensitivity”. Yet this raises the question of whether his review will turn on preventative measures rather than a police culture that may have contributed to a less old-fashioned incompetence, that inspired by Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) policies.

Then there’s the ongoing IOPC investigation, which has also insisted it would examine procedures turning on cultural attitudes. However, it’s likely IOPC report will concentrate on the training, conduct and experience of the officers at the scene of Nowak’s murder. Their testimony on their attitudes due to DEI training will be crucial, as long as the right questions are asked by suitably shrewd investigators. Will the IOPC be able to provide them? After all, the watchdog is enthusiastically signed up to precisely the same regime and culture as the forces it investigates. In short, skeptics might wonder if the Chalk review will ultimately turn on matters ancillary to the real meat and potatoes of Nowak’s treatment at the scene of his murder. Did Hampshire Police, due to politically modish DEI policies, create an environment in which officers felt unable to properly question Digwa’s initial account, or even consider doing so? Why did they choose to handcuff Nowak as he lay dying?

Should institutional issues be found to be a significant factor — and, for the avoidance of any doubt, I suspect they were — then the suspects fall beyond a crime scene on a winter’s night in Southampton. They encompass an entire generation of politicians, Home Office mandarins and senior officers. Will they deploy their traditional shield wall of inquiries and reviews, hoping the Nowaks will be satisfied by a few hapless constables thrown under buses? It’s doubtful, but Whitehall will trundle on. After all, a public inquiry ten years from now will find any guilty parties comfortably ensconced in the Lords and the after-dinner speaking circuit. There’s a good chance the Nowaks are fully aware of this. And I doubt they will be satisfied.