Nottingham stabbing victim's mother: 'Why was my son's killing not treated as racist?'

Valdo Calocane murdered three white people before attempting to kill another three in Nottingham, leaving them seriously injured on June 13 2023.

The murderer, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, is now serving an indefinite hospital order in a high-security facility.

Much of the case has focused on Calocane's mental illness, having been treated by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust for two years before the attacks.

But, with the recent tragedy of Henry Nowak fuelling anger towards Britain's policing system, Mrs Webber, Barnaby's mother, has compared her son's murder to the killing of the 18-year-old university student, who was stabbed to death with a Sikh ceremonial blade.

She called on Britain to address the relevance of race in crime across Britain and claimed that if Calocane was a white man who murdered black people, race would have played a larger role in discourse surrounding the incident.

"What we do need to do is be brave and have those really difficult discussions in this country,” Mrs Webber told The Telegraph.

"(Calocane) was a black man who killed three white people and tried to kill another three white people, and that was never part of the conversation.

"If it had been the other way round, it would have been."

In the case of Henry Nowak, discussions surrounding the local police force's commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) were catapulted into the limelight.

On the night of the murder, officers were originally called to the scene in Southampton on December 3 after the murderer's brother lied and said he had been racially abused.

The finance student was left to die while police handcuffed him and read his rights, just as the victim slipped out of consciousness after repeating "I can't breathe" nine times.

The force in question, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary, forced staff to endure diversity training against their will - despite receiving warnings against doing so.

Following a racism and misogyny scandal which led to the dismissal of five officers in 2021, the force introduced a mandatory equality and inclusion training programme.

The taxpayer-funded scheme cost £861,737 in total, which is roughly £144 for every employee over a three-year period.

Hampshire Police's 6,250 members of staff were all made to undergo the in-house initiative.

After interviewing officers, Reading University's Professor Netta Weinstein - one of the training course's creators - warned that the course could "backfire, resulting in reinforcing bias or counterproductive behaviours".

The force's staff were trained to be aware of racism, unconscious bias, and privilege, alongside contested "critical race theory".

One in seven of those at Hampshire Police had felt "controlled and pressured" to adopt these notions, living in fear "mistakes would have been held against me", a damning survey exposed.

Meanwhile, a fifth said they feared being "rejected for saying the wrong thing".