Salter Lecturer Speaks Out On ‘Two-Tier Policing’

By Abimbola Johnson. As reported by Rebecca Hardy in the Friend magazine. 26 June 2026. The Friend is the weekly magazine read by British Quakers. It is essential reading for Quaker affairs. To subscribe, or read other articles, go to https://thefriend.org.

Abimbola Johnson delivered the 2025 lecture ‘Pausing the Police’, organised by the Quaker Socialist Society. She is a barrister who has specialised in the relationship between the pope and the black community.

‘An attempt to turn policy into a culture-war talking point.’ (Abimbola Johnson, on claims of ‘two-tier’ policing).

Following the death of Henry Novak, the 2025 Salter Lecturer Abimbola Johnson has called for claims of ‘two-tier’ policing to not derail progress in anti-racism work. The eighteen-year-old was arrested and handcuffed by police after being stabbed five times by Vickram Digwa, who falsely claimed that he had been racially abused by Novak.

According to Abimbola Johnson, chair of the Inde­pend­ent Scru­tiny And Over­sight Board, which oversees police race action plans, the backlash over the handling of the murder risked ‘throwing away’ improvements in anti-racist policing.

Writing in The Telegraph, the human rights barrister said that her watchdog consistently showed that progress in tackling racism within policing had been ‘too slow, too inconsistent and too poorly embedded’. In an article in the Mirror she added that the claims of ‘two-tier policing’ are ‘an attempt to turn policy into a culture-war talking point’. 

On Linked In, Johnson wrote: ‘It is ridiculous to keep having to justify the premise of anti-racism when the evidential basis is so clear. The disparities in stop  and search, use of force, Taser, strip searches, deaths and serious injury after police contact, victimisation, misconduct and workforce experience are not imagined. They are documented again and again.’

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch cri­ti­cised the Inde­pend­ent Scru­tiny And Over­sight Board in the Sunday Times, claiming its lead­ers ‘believe in defund­ing the police’. 

Abimbola Johnson said it was legit­im­ate to ask whether the police were given ‘too much pub­lic money’ and some of it should be diver­ted to ‘more pre­vent­at­ive things to deal with the causes of crimin­al­ity’.

The police watchdog’s comments received widespread media interest including from the BBC’s Today programme. 

Rebecca Hardy, in the Friend, 26.06.2026.