Laura Kuenssberg

The police officers then arrived at the scene thinking that and didn't then respond to Henry Novak's pleas for help, instead handcuffing him and arresting him as he lay bleeding on the ground.

And that's really why all these issues have come up and prompted this conversation of whether or not the police have been paying too much attention

to the possibility of being accused of racism or being racist in how they're going about their business.

And at this point, we don't know what was going through those police officers' mind.

And that will be investigated.

But the issue is absolutely up there in headlights.

And there's a long history, isn't there, of trying to deal with all these issues for the police.

Because if you go back in time, the evidence suggests very strongly there was a lot of dreadful behaviour, as revealed by the Macpherson report back in the late 90s.

You know, we talked about it on Newscast.

People talked about it everywhere.

There was an absolutely huge response to that.

People will remember the images of all sorts of public figures taking the knee, British politicians taking the knee, sports stars taking the knee.

...involved in the slave trade.

And one of the accusations actually made by reform is that protests around that...

were policed more leniently than the later Southport riots, for example.

But it's really interesting that the change to policy here in this country came out of those as a direct response to what happened to George Floyd.

Do you think that was right?

Yeah.

I mean, it's a complete word salad.

And it's interesting, our colleague Sima Kotecho spends a lot of time covering these issues.