Women who are wolf-whistled or cat-called in the street should call 999, says Police Commissioner - "Alison Hernandez, police and crime commissioner for Devon and Cornwall, worries that incidents are going unreported, leaving the authorities "a bit clueless about the level of the problem"... Official guidance states that people should only call 999 if "a crime is happening", "someone is in immediate danger", "a suspect for a serious crime is nearby" or "there is a traffic collision involving injury or danger to other road users". Ms Hernandez, elected to her role in 2016, made her stance clear as the Law Commission considers whether misogyny and ageism should be added to the list of categories that constitute a hate crime... former chairman of West Midlands Police Federation Richard Cooke said officers should "focus urgently on genuine crime"."Let’s not encourage people to think we can solve deep social problems or give impolite people manners," he added."Are we really going to be required to routinely record, and potentially act on, incidents like a builder’s wolf whistle or an insensitive comment towards an elderly driver?"I do not believe for one second that this is what the public, outside of the politically correct 'court of Twitter', expects or wants us to do."Knife crime has risen to a new record high, with police recording 44,076 offences involving a knife or sharp instrument last year, the highest total since figures began. Robbery is now at its highest level since 2007, increasing by 76 per cent in four years.Earlier this month, official figures revealed police are solving half as many crimes as four years ago with under one in 13 offences leading to a prosecution."
Uxbridge stabbing: Teen was killed at knife awareness course - "A teenager who was fatally stabbed in a council headquarters in west London was attending a knife awareness course.Hakim Sillah was attacked in the youth offending service department at the Hillingdon Civic Centre in Uxbridge on Thursday."
We desperately need to be honest about the links between race and gang violence - "some 27,000 under-19s identify themselves as gang members.More than 300,000 admit to knowing someone who is in a gang. In the past week alone, nine boys have died in English cities, mostly from stab wounds after vicious, coordinated attacks. NHS officials report that the number of non-lethal assaults of this kind is now running into the thousands. Some of those involved with gangs, according to the Commissioner, have yet to see their tenth birthday... Casey told us what everyone knew but no one wanted to say: that the sexual crimes against hundreds of children, mostly white girls, were (and probably still are) being carried out by mostly British Pakistani Muslim men – but no one would ever point the finger at the perpetrators for fear of being denounced as racists and Islamophobes. Truth was sacrificed on the altar of racial tranquillity.Though Longfield does not say so in terms, the evidence shows that the wave of killings and maimings we are seeing are assassinations of black children by other black children, all too often directed by adult drug dealers. And it pays to read the small print in her report. The technical appendices tell us that, in effect, race is the best predictor of being in a gang, being a victim of knife crime or of being a killer... Yet, to read our newspapers and to listen to our media, you would imagine that race played no part in this issue at all. The BBC in particular is guilty of whitewashing the truth. Its defence is that race should only be reported where it is relevant. Yet it has no qualms about routinely describing stop and search by police in racial terms... How many more black children have to die before politicians, police and the media are ready to face up to what is really taking place? We need to focus honestly on who is dying and who is doing the killing if we are to stop the carnage. But for the moment, it seems that as far as Britain’s establishment is concerned, #blacklivesjustdon’tmatteratall."
London’s Knife Crime Is Not the Fault of the Black Community - "the new left [assumed] that race was at the root of the problems, and (anxious to deflect blame from the black community, a broadly imaginary construct), instead tried to suggest that the problems had been created by British racism.. Because the architects of New Labour’s multiculturalism now broadly agreed with the racist right that gang violence had underlying racial causes, they needed to find scapegoats, and so drew upon the spectre of institutional (later to become systemic) racism. The Metropolitan Police force was the perfect target.In 1995, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Paul Condon had tried to defend the racial disparities in his force’s stop-and-search statistics by pointing out that around 80% of muggers in London were black. Rather than dwell on this startling fact, we progressives chose to turn on the police instead, accusing Condon of racism for even mentioning race... One of many moments of awakening was the heart-breaking murder of Damilola Taylor, a ten-year-old Nigerian boy, in south London in 2000. His grieving father flew in from Nigeria, and his incomprehension was memorable: why was the British obsession with race being allowed to get in the way of protecting citizens?My then-teenage son, who is half-Indian, also provided me with a raw perspective on these problems. He didn’t recognise my view of a violent, racist police force, and suggested that policing might have improved significantly since the eighties. He told me about a teenage street culture that mocked police officers, unafraid of any consequences. When, in the late-nineties, he was mugged at knifepoint five times in close succession, leaving him traumatised, he pointed out to me that all of his assailants had been black... The onslaught against the police emanating from the nouveau-woke media, the New Labour government, the politically correct establishment (in the form of bodies such as the Commission for Racial Equality, the CRE), and finally in the form of police cuts, led to a decline in street policing and in stop-and-search. The inevitable happened: knife crime inexorably rose, and so did deaths. The statistics tell a clear story: knife murders have risen steadily for two decades, and far more so in London than anywhere else. While black people make up 13% of the London population, 44% of murder victims and 48% of murder suspects are black. Meanwhile the use of stop-and-search has fallen dramatically in the past decade. All the while, an increasingly white, middle-class, identity-obsessed left has been peddling its narrative of systemic racism to explain these problems, and averting its gaze as black youth die in increasing numbers. The authorities turned to race advisers—typically self-selected, middle-class, middle-aged black and Asian people—who were expected to explain the problem, but had little clue, as in reality the possession of brown skin gave them no deep insights. So they just told the authorities what the authorities wanted to hear: systemic racism, marginalisation, neglect and austerity were to blame. The violence, however, didn’t neatly correlate with any of those things. It had been driven by Jamaican drug gangs, who had found London a soft target, and then allowed to embed as a culture by authorities that were so terrified of being labelled racist that they ended up becoming racist, turning a blind eye to a problem that was disproportionately affecting black families. Eventually, even the chief architect of New Labour political correctness, Trevor Phillips, a veteran anti-racist, who had headed the CRE, had to take a step back and admit that he had got it terribly wrong, and that multiculturalism (a euphemism for segregationist thinking) was a huge mistake. But, by now, left-wing commentators, driven mad by the racialised thinking of identity politics, simply turned on him as a traitor. Old-school identitarians, like the London Labour MP Diane Abbott, still reflexively attack stop-and-search, while providing no coherent analysis of how to resolve the crime problem. Abbott and other identitarians appear to be more offended by the policing targeting black offenders than they are by the deaths of black murder victims. But Abbott is playing to a mostly white, identitarian, Labour Party audience. Her views appear to chime far less with black communities, who are losing their sons to violence. The Black Lives Matter era has only added to the euphemisms and confusion. The identity-left has only one narrative: that systemic oppressions are the real problem facing people of colour, and that the way to address problems like gang crime is to recognise that black people are (in mysterious ways) driven to violence by an oppressive, systemically racist establishment. In April 2018, Prime Minister Theresa May announced an annual Stephen Lawrence Day, to commemorate the death of a young black man stabbed by racists in 1993. And yet racist murders are outliers, rare to the point of statistical insignificance. There will be no Damilola Taylor Day. There will be no annual commemorations for Harry Ozuka, Kader Saleh or Kwabena Nelson, all young black men murdered in 2018. Our strange new racist anti-racist culture is only apparently interested in taking notice of problems for which we can blame ourselves."
Five ex-heads of Scotland Yard call for public inquiry into state of policing as they warn country has 'descended into lawlessness' - "In a letter to The Times, the former commissioners said forces' resources have been "drained to dangerously low levels" meaning that victims of crime now have "perilously low expectations".They wrote: "The reduction of police and support staff by more than 30,000, the virtual destruction of neighbourhood policing and the inadvisable undermining of lawful police powers such as stop and search have taken their toll."Theresa May is heavily criticised in the letter, and the five former senior officers each condemned the "emasculation of British policing" under her watch as home secretary."
Damn "far right" conspiracy theories!
UK Police Force Highlights Problem of Racist Toddlers - "A UK police force created a video which portrayed a white toddler being racist towards another toddler in kindergarten as part of “hate crime awareness week.”Yes, really.Devon & Cornwall Police posted a cartoon video to their official Twitter account which features a blonde haired, blue eyed girl racially abusing a dark sinned boy... the cartoons urge the public to “report “hateful” behaviour “even if it isn’t a crime”, offering assurances that “you don’t even need evidence”... a chief of police in Britain chose to recognize “international pronouns day” by putting out a video warning people that misgendering transgender people was a form of “abuse.” All this is occurring while police budgets are stretched to breaking point and the UK’s violent crime rate continues to soar."
Police spend £1,500,000 on electric cars that are too slow to catch criminals - "At least 448 green vehicles have been bought by police forces across the country in a bid to meet emission targets.But there’s just one slight problem – they aren’t much good at chasing crooks or rushing to save people in crisis.Practically all of the vehicles, which cost at least £1.49 million altogether, are used for non-emergencies and for bosses to travel to work.Official police reports say it takes too long to charge the batteries to be ready for a hot pursuit at a moment’s notice.They also say there is too much risk of them running out of juice before before the end of a shift. According to figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, 30 of the UK’s 46 police forces bought or leased the 448 green-vehicles. Several authorities refused to reveal how much they spent, meaning the collective figure is likely to be well over the £1.49 million... "I’ve been in a police car on so many occasions when an emergency call has come in""
When virtue signalling is more important than fighting crime
Luckily, they're still fast enough to catch "transphobes" who "misgender" people on Twitter
One machete attack happens every 90 minutes on UK streets - "Machete attacks are taking place every 90 minutes on our streets... London saw 425 of the attacks, with 99 in Greater Manchester, 77 in the West Midlands and 29 each in Merseyside and West Yorkshire. It represents a dramatic rise from just three years before, when the deadly blades were used in only 100 crimes a month over the same period."
Video of man mocking Muslim prayer room in Bolton Hospital being investigated as hate crime - "TWO videos being shared on Facebook of a man pretending to pray to 'Aladdin' in a Muslim prayer room are being investigated as a hate crime.Videos shared from a profile on Facebook under the name Terence Howarth show the man in what is believed to be the prayer room of Royal Bolton Hospital."
Neath Port Talbot primary teachers 'may need bodycams' - "Primary school teachers may need to start wearing bodycams to tackle an increase in violence from children, a councillor has warned.Steve Hunt, who is also chairman of governors for Blaendulais Primary School and a governor at YGG Blaendulais, said there were problems across Neath Port Talbot... a number of specialist facilities had opened for children who displayed "extreme behaviour" in recent years, adding there were plans for a new centre for children with autism spectrum disorder at Dwr y Felin comprehensive school."
Grooming ‘epidemic’ as almost 19,000 children identified as sexual exploitation victims in England - "Campaigners say the true figure is far higher and accused the government of failing to tackle child sexual exploitation, despite promises made after high-profile cases in Rotherham and Rochdale."
British Cops Hunt Facebook Users Who Posted ‘Offensive’ Comments About Grooming Gangs - "While many of the groomers’ sex crimes against young girls were, by their own admissions, racially-motivated, Judge Penny Moreland allowed the convicts to receive lesser sentences because she believed the victims were targeted “not because of their race, but because they were young, impressionable, naïve and vulnerable.”As reported by The Times in October 2017, British police arrested at least 3,395 people for making offensive comments on the Internet in 2016, across 29 police forces. The exact figures are likely to be significantly higher, as 13 police forces refused to provide the requested information."
I guess it's easier to track down people on Facebook than the grooming gang members
We have to talk about these Pakistani gangs - "PC isn’t just irritating or stupid. It isn’t just woke students banning sombreros or schools getting iffy about ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’. PC destroys lives.A report into police and council failings in Manchester has found that gangs of predominantly Pakistani men were free to abuse up to 57 girls after chief cops and local officials turned a blind eye to this foul, cruel behaviour. Why did they turn away? Partly out of fear of stoking racial tensions. Partly because they were worried that drawing attention to the grooming and exploitation of mostly white working-class girls by Asian men might ‘incite racial hatred’ and damage multicultural relations. Let’s put it plainly: they sacrificed girls to political correctness; they thought that preserving the ideology of multiculturalism was more important than protecting girls from harm.The independent review into grooming and abuse in Manchester in the mid-2000s, published yesterday, makes for grim reading... similar to Rotherham, Telford and other parts of the UK, this was a case involving what is sometimes referred to as a Muslim grooming gang... The review focuses on the tragic case of Victoria Agoglia, a 15-year-old girl in the care of Manchester social services who died from a heroin overdose in 2003... Think about this: we live in a time in which a middle-class woman’s complaint about overhearing a sexist joke or having a hand briefly placed on her knee becomes a huge scandal and can even dominate news coverage, and yet a vulnerable working-class girl can experience horrendous genuine abuse and a coroner, influenced by the view of social services, will refer to it as ‘sexual favours’. Greater Manchester Police launched Operation Augusta following Victoria’s death. They identified 57 victims and 97 potential perpetrators. Yet hardly any of these people were brought to justice and their ‘activities [were not] disrupted’, as the review says. That is, they carried on abusing. Operation Augusta was wrapped up early and resources were devoted to other, less ‘sensitive’ crimes... even discussing it is difficult. People are branded racist if they bring it up. You’re an Islamophobe if you talk about the background of most of these men. Sarah Champion was thrown out of the shadow cabinet for daring to write about gangs of Pakistani men abusing girls in her constituency of Rotherham. Corbynistas and Muslim groups accused her of racism... many of today’s newspapers have not led with this story in the way we should expect them to, given it is a huge social and political scandal. What’s more, feminists, so-called progressives and the allegedly pro-working-class left are silent about the whole thing.There are no hashtags. There is no #MeToo solidarity for these abused girls. There are no expressions of concern from the left. Just shameful, cowardly silence... They’ve shed more tears over a few rude headlines about the painfully privileged Duchess of Sussex than they have over the revelation that working-class girls were degraded in the most awful way because the authorities couldn’t be bothered to help them.All day yesterday the chattering classes were droning on about ‘white privilege’ while ignoring the reports about white, mostly poor girls in Manchester being abused. The cognitive dissonance is complete: ‘All white people have privilege’, they cry, as a review reveals the abuse and rape of white girls by mostly Pakistani gangs."
Maybe the authors of the report will be arrested for being "far right" "extremists"
One leftist response I've seen is that sexual abuse of working class girls and the police ignoring it is an age old British phenomenon, so this is nothing new. But I have been unable to find historical statistics demonstrating that there's nothing new here
Asian grooming gang free to roam streets because officers were told to 'find other ethnicities' to investigate, detective claims - "The inquiry was launched off the back of allegations made by former GMP detective turned whistleblower, Maggie Oliver.As a detective, she had investigated countless gangland murders, shootings, kidnappings, rapes and witness protection jobs. She said that she felt “vindicated” by the report.She said: “Girls were lost to the wind. What has been the cost of all these lives? We will never be able to put a number on how many lives have been lost... “I was face-to-face with 15 years of misogyny - ‘stupid woman, she’s become too emotionally involved’ - authorities are very powerful and tried to control the dialogue."... the men who exploited [Victoria Agoglia] "have never been brought to justice""
Intersectionality is when you denigrate a woman with gendered insults for being racist in wanting to investigate Muslim grooming gangs
Rotherham police chief: we ignored sex abuse of children | News | The Times - "A senior police officer admitted that his force ignored the sexual abuse of girls by Pakistani grooming gangs for decades because it was afraid of increasing “racial tensions”, a watchdog has ruled.After a five-year investigation, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) upheld a complaint that the Rotherham officer told a missing child’s distraught father that the town “would erupt” if it was known that Asian men were routinely having sex with under-age white girls... Until now police forces across the north and the Midlands have consistently denied that concerns about upsetting community sensitivities or accusations of racism were a factor in their past failure to tackle grooming gangs."
Child molester given longer sentence as victims are Asian - " A child molester who abused two Asian girls was rightly given a longer sentence than if his victims had been white because Asian sex crime victims suffer more, a leading judge has ruled.Mr Justice Walker said it was proper for paedophile Jamal Muhammed Raheem Ul Nasir to have been given a tougher than normal sentence because his victims were Asian... The judge who jailed him, Sally Cahill QC, specifically said that the fact the victims were Asian had been factored in as an "aggravating feature" when passing sentence.She stated that the victims and their families had suffered particular "shame" in their communities because of what had happened to them.Additionally, there were cultural concerns that the girls' future prospects of being regarded as a "good catch" for arranged marriages might be damaged."
It seems feminists should encourage "slut shaming" since that will mean sex offenders get a stiffer sentence
Trump's knife crime claim: how do the US and UK compare? - "trauma surgeon Martin Griffiths told the BBC that some of his colleagues had likened the Royal London Hospital in east London where he works to the former British military base Camp Bastion in Afghanistan."Some of my military colleagues have described their practice here as being similar to being at Bastion," he said. "About a quarter of what we see in our practice is knife and gun injury. And it's now we're doing major life-saving cases on a daily basis.""
Trump's knife crime claim: how do the US and UK compare? - "There were 34 firearm homicides in the US per million of population in 2016, compared with 0.48 shooting-related murders in the UK. Knife murders are also higher stateside: there were 4.96 homicides “due to knives or cutting instruments” in the US for every million of population in 2016. In Britain there were 3.26 homicides involving a sharp instrument per million people in the year from April 2016 to March 2017."
So much for the UK suffering a knife crime epidemic because criminals don't have guns
UK Police classify kiss on the cheek as sexual assault - "Police searched for a man who kissed a 70-year-old lady on the cheek. If this seems like an odd use of police resources, just wait. The incident of a peck on the cheek has been classified as a sexual assault... It all began when a van driver was trying to drive under a low bridge in Matlock and the van became stuck. A woman in her 70s helped guide the van out from under the bridge. Once clear, the man stepped out of the van to thank her. This thanks included a kiss on her cheek.The Derbyshire Police took to Twitter to get the public's help in finding this dastardly man. They said "We are appealing for help to identify a man who kissed a woman on the cheek to thank her for helping when his lorry became stuck under a low bridge. Were you in the area of Dale Road, #Matlock, between 12pm and 4 pm on Tuesday, 28 April?"... That the public pushed back against this absurdity to the point where the Derbyshire police deleted their tweet, and hopefully called off the investigation, is a good thing... The nature of authoritarianism is that it will reach and smother until we resist it. The public itself is the check against this kind of power... This incident likely would not have spurred an investigation at all had the sexes been reversed, and it was the older woman who pecked the van driver on the cheek. Instead of being classed as a sexual assault, it would have been a cute little story related to pals over socially distanced beers or a Zoom call."
How did polite disagreement become a police matter? - "in 2017, when Amber Rudd made a speech about immigration – which was literally part of her job as home secretary – an Oxford professor reported it as a hate incident. Staggeringly, the police agreed to record it as such. In 2018, an Asian man drew a picture of his Asian friend and joked that the image made his friend look like a terrorist. Despite both men finding it funny, police recorded it as a hate incident and ordered the one who drew it to write an apology. As the name suggests, non-crime hate incidents are not technically crimes. You cannot be fined or go to prison as a result. But the record does show up on an enhanced DBS check, meaning that it can be disclosed to future employers, for instance. Even children have been logged by police for committing these non-offences. Now, even writing a letter can result in this black mark being put against your name. Pensioner Douglas Kedge wrote a letter to an anti-abortion campaigner in which he disagreed with her views. The letter was reported to police as a hate crime. Officers noted that the letter was not illegal and even accepted that it was politely worded – but, as their training demands, they still filed it as a non-crime hate incident. So there you have it: writing a polite letter now warrants police involvement. Kedge has had to deal with police interference because he respectfully stood up for women’s right to abortion."
Police record 120,000 'non-crime' hate incidents that may stop accused getting jobs - "A High Court judge ruled on Friday the Hate Crime Operational Guidelines, which informs police work nationally, had been unlawfully used to interfere with a man’s freedom of speech. The guidelines, rolled out six years ago by the College of Policing, state that any action perceived to be motivated by hostility towards religion, race or transgender idenitiy must be recorded “irrespective of whether there is any evidence to identify the hate element”... It comes as a former police officer, Harry Miller, won his legal battle against Humberside Police after facing investigation over alleged “transphobic” tweets. In a landmark ruling, the High Court found the force had a “chilling effect” on the free speech rights of Mr Miller by visiting his place of work and suggesting he may face prosecution. The married father-of-four was contacted by a ‘community cohesion officer’ last year after a Twitter user complained he had shared a "transphobic limerick". Mr Justice Julian Knowles compared the actions of the police to the Stasi and Gestapo, as he ruled the tweets were lawful and said there was not “the slightest risk” Mr Miller would commit a criminal offence by continuing to tweet. The right to hold opinions ranging from the inoffensive to "the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative", he said, was a “cardinal democratic freedom". "The effect of the police turning up at his place of work because of his political opinions must not be underestimated,” his judgment concluded. "To do so would be to undervalue a cardinal democratic freedom. In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi. We have never lived in an Orwellian society." Clutching a copy of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four outside court, Mr Miller, 54, hailed the outcome as a “watershed moment for liberty” and vowed to continue tweeting. His solicitor, Paul Conrathe, claimed the ruling meant it was “entirely acceptable to hold the view and communicate that a trans woman is not a woman”. “That view is not hateful, transphobic or unlawful,” he said in a statement. The 65-page judgment said the reaction of the woman who complained about Mr Miller's tweets, named only as Mrs B, was, at times, "at the outer margin of rationality". The judge said the statement of Mrs B - which suggested Mr Miller would have been antisemitic during the Second World War and that transgender people could "kiss their rights goodbye" if he won the case - represented an "extreme mindset". He said her evidence "would tend to confirm" the view of an academic expert that "some involved in the transgender debate are prepared to accuse others with whom they disagree of showing hatred, or as being transphobic when they are not, but simply hold a different view". The case has echoes of recent legal battles over transgender issues, including Maya Forstater, a tax expert who lost her job over alleged “offensive” tweets. The 45-year-old, who used social media to question government proposals to allow people to self-identify as the opposite sex, took her employer to a tribunal last year. However, in her case, an employment judge ruled there was no legal right to question whether a transgender person is a man or woman and decided Ms Forstater’s view was "incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others”."
Harry Miller: Legal victory after alleged transphobic tweets - "His victory is a headache for the College of Policing, which now has to come up with new "safeguards" to ensure that any future recording of non-crime hate incidents does not disproportionately interfere with the legal right to speak one's mind. That means rethinking guidance that dates back to the fallout from the 1993 racist murder of Stephen Lawrence."
Priti Patel calls on police chiefs to wipe 'non-crime hate incidents' from people's records - "Allegations of hate incidents should be wiped from an individual's record if no crime is found to have been committed, the Home Secretary told police chiefs as she asked for a review of the policy... police have recorded non-crime hate incidents against more than 120,000 people - 2,000 of which were against children... The Free Speech Union also criticsed the the policy. Toby Young, General Secretary of the FSU, said: 'Non-Crime Hate Incidents are an invention of the College of Policing, an unelected body. 'They have never been approved by Parliament, there is no legal threshold or independent evidentiary test applied to them and members of the public have no right of appeal against them. 'Indeed, a member of the public can have a Non-Crime Hate Incident recorded against their name without ever being informed of the fact."
Obsession with hate crime makes me despair of police force I was proud to serve, writes HARRY MILLER - "Anyone who has called the police to report the sort of low-level crime that blights daily life will know how hard it is to get more than a token response. Police forces across the UK no longer even pretend to be interested in vandalism, burglaries, fly-tipping or drug dealing by teenagers in parks. From depressing experience, many people know that, unless they need a police crime number for an insurance claim, it’s hardly worth making a report. Nothing will be done. But as research this month reveals, there is one certain way to stir the police into action: report a fellow citizen for saying something, or making some comment on social media, that constitutes an ‘incident’ — or a Non Crime Hate Incident (NCHI)... Even though it’s been recorded, it doesn’t have to be true. It may be malicious, or ridiculous . . . such as the NCHI recorded against a man in Bedfordshire who facetiously whistled the theme tune from Bob The Builder at his neighbour... Sometimes these are farcical. One swimming teacher in West Yorkshire was reported after a child accidentally banged his head on the side of the pool — the lad’s mother claimed this was allowed to happen ‘due to his ethnicity’. In Norfolk, a Portuguese man reported a hate incident directed against him after he found a half-eaten burger bun on his driveway. And when a gay man told police that his cocaine dealer had cheated him, the incident was recorded as homophobic abuse . . . not a drugs offence... NCHI reports do nothing to stop real racism and other hate crimes. The purpose of these arbitrary warnings is to discourage people from saying anything, in real life or through the internet, that may be perceived as inflammatory, offensive or provocative. Police refer to this as the ‘chilling effect’. Its proponents, the College of Policing, believe it has the effect of lowering the temperature of social discourse, of cooling down disputes and discussions. But the term is frighteningly apt because the real effect is to freeze people in their tracks, and send a cold shiver of fear down their spines... TV presenter Giles Coren made headlines when he complained police had done nothing when his £60,000 Jaguar was stolen for the second time from outside his home. (The Met did later swing into action, but only after the Daily Mail publicised the theft.) I joked to a friend that had Giles identified as ‘non-binary’, a police helicopter might have been on the scene within minutes to investigate the ‘hate crime’ against him. Of course, I’m not supposed to make off-colour jokes like that. In fact, I have been specifically warned against it and there is a Non Hate Crime Incident on my own police record... I was being lectured by a police officer on the sort of jokes and one-liners I fired off via Twitter. These included a tongue-in-cheek question about Caitlyn Jenner’s Olympic gold medal . . . which the transgender former athlete won in the Men’s Decathlon in 1976. I was not ‘trolling’ anyone. These remarks were not aimed at any individual and were not meant to intimidate. I was simply joining in a debate, exercising a perfectly legal right to express my views. I asked if any of my tweets were criminal. PC Gul assured me they were not. ‘So why are you ringing me?’ I said. ‘I need to check your thinking,’ he said. No wonder they call it the chilling effect. My blood runs cold at the implication of those words. If Britain has become a country where police are allowed to decide what we may and may not think, let alone say, everybody’s liberty is in jeopardy. A High Court judge was equally aghast. After I took Humberside Police to the Royal Courts of Justice last year, Mr Justice Julian Knowles ruled police had unlawfully interfered with my right to freedom of expression, and they did so as they were siding against my political opinions... The array of supposed hate crimes is constantly expanding. Even black-clad Goths can be the victims of hate speech, according to a recent ruling — which implies any criticism of fashion is prohibited. It’s nonsense. But every police force in the country now subscribes to it. Meanwhile, real crimes are being treated as unimportant. It’s enough to make this ex-copper despair. What has happened to policing in this country?"
Meme - External_Yam_2179: "Civilian Non-crime hate incident - I need your help! General Discussion
Hi everyone- this is not my normal account and has been set up only for the purpose of asking this question. I hope that's okay and also hope you understand why after reading this post. It's quite long so I apologise in advance. I just recently had a mid-life career change that involved some University study, and then a futher two years of on-the-job training before I will be fully qualified. I breezed through the University portion of my training [although with Covid it was all via Zoom] and was just getting ready to start my first day of actual, practical work experience. I was really looking forward to it, especially after nearly fifteen years parked behind a desk. My new career can potentially involve working with children and vulnerable people, so required a DBS check before I can set foot on my new work premises. There was a slight delay in checks being undertaken [again due to Covid] but I wasn't really fussed as I have [or thought I did!] a clean criminal record. I've never been arrested. I had three points a lifetime ago but I'd already checked that wouldn't be something that would impact my new career. What I didn't know about was non-crime hate incidents. I received a call from my new workplace at the start of last week telling me they wouldn't be able to proceed with my work placement because of the hate crime on my criminal record! I was only shocked for about five minutes before realising there must be some mistake, as I've never even been arrested before. Long story short, pretty much all of last week was spent going back and forth between my University and prospective workplace to get a copy of the DBS, which was provided to me. I've copied what it says below, with identifying info removed. Some of it doesn't make grammatical sense, but that's the way it's written:
Ready for filing: non crime hate. Victim has reported that [Me] has a flag in rear window of his car checkedx which she believes to be x George Cross. Victim believes this has been displayed as a symbol of racial hate and has made her feel alarmed and upset. Victim believes [Me] is likely to be involved in right wing activity targeting people like victim characteristic. non crim hate can be filed.
Like I said, it doesn't make proper sense and seems to have been written without any great care, but I hope you get the drift. After consulting with my University, I am now aware there is a VAST difference between a hate crime and hate incident, but even though this has been explained to them, my prospective employer isn't budging and says that for insurance reasons, I can't work with them and will not be allowed to work with other local trusts that do similar work. Essentially, my career is over before it has even started. It's true that I did have a small flag in the rear-window of my old car, but it was a Union Jack not a George Cross and I didn't put it there- it was a used car and was one of those film stickers that would have done more damage to remove than just to leave [or so thought!] I've been on the phone to 101 all day today and they have told me there is nothing that can be done the Home Office makes them take these records. One person I spoke to actually said 'if you have a problem with it, then take us to court!' lam sorry if this has rambled on, but I don't really know what to do. I can't afford a lawyer, never mind afford taking the police to court. Is there anything I can do to resolve this? Thank you so much to anyone that takes the time to respond."
Police pin hopes on ‘rainbow cars’ to drive out hate crime - "critics have said that forces should instead focus on policing “real” issues such as knife crime and rape, with the latest figures showing poor prosecution rate... Ms Cooke, who works at Cheshire Police, added that the “cars are there in the communities on normal policing patrol just to show the community that we want you to come forward... It is there to try and give confidence to our LGBT+ community, but also to other under-represented groups”. She said that the “cost is quite minimal”, but the impact is “huge”. The number of hate crimes reported to police have more than doubled in recent years, with allegations of transgender hate crime seeing the sharpest rise. However, cash-strapped forces across the country have faced criticism for focusing on the allegations, a large number of which stem from social media comments... Harry Miller, a former police officer and founder of campaign group Fair Cop, said: “We don’t see the Met with special cars for knife crime, even though the number of stabbings in London is appalling. “The problem is that the second that you see a rainbow car, you know that it is a police force that has made its mind up about some very contentious issues. You no longer see a police car or a police officer who is there to support everyone, from all political persuasions, without fear or favour. “They have literally tied their colours to the mast and painted their cars with their political leanings. They are painting rainbows on their cars when we have figures showing that only seven per cent of violent crime ends in a prosecution. “They have moved from policing crime to policing thoughts and speech, because it is easier.”"
mirax on Twitter - "UK police not doing much to catch rapists - some in their own midst - but virtue tweeting about Asexual "identity". The fuck."
Listen, it is not racist to criticise Saudi Arabia - "We all know that Saudis who criticise their government often find themselves in a lot of trouble. They might even get a knock on the door from the police. Government critics are ‘harassed, arbitrarily detained [and] prosecuted’, says Amnesty. But did you know that people in the UK are now being investigated for slamming the Saudi regime? Believe it or not, the police right here in Britain, in this supposedly secular, liberal society, have taken to sniffing around if they see or hear stinging condemnation of the Saudis. At least that’s what the truly bonkers decision to investigate a Saudi-bashing banner waved by Crystal Palace fans on Saturday suggests... The banner was made and held aloft by a Palace fan group called the Holmesdale Fanatics. They said they wanted to echo the ‘widespread condemnation and anger’ that has greeted ‘the Saudi-led takeover of Newcastle’. The Premier League promotes women’s football and the wearing of rainbow armbands, the Fanatics say, and yet it lets a regime in which women have few rights and homosexuality is illegal take over a top club – ‘total hypocrisy’. They’re not wrong. What’s more, everything on their banner was factually correct. The Saudi regime really does execute some criminals by beheading. It censors and persecutes. Top officials have been implicated in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. And Saudis are key funders of Salafi jihadism. So what the hell are the police looking into? The banner was ‘offensive’, they say. Worse, it might be racist... It is deeply disturbing that a police force in the UK has launched ‘enquiries’ into the statement of plain facts about the Islamic theocracy of Saudi Arabia. Apart from anything else this is a grotesque insult to Saudis who are currently in jail for criticising their government. Maybe they were being ‘offensive’, too? Keep ’em banged up. What happened at Selhurst Park was an act of political expression. A small group of fans were making a perfectly legitimate political statement. And for the police to ‘enquire’ into political speech – any kind of political speech – is outrageous. It is a testament to how severe the free-speech crisis in the UK has become. The Holmesdale Fanatics are completely right to highlight the hypocrisy of the footballing authorities. For months and months, football officials and the media elites have cheered players for making the political statement of ‘taking the knee’, yet they’ve said alarmingly little about the launch of police enquiries into a political statement about the Saudi regime. It seems that in the world of football, it’s cool to bash America and its supposedly racist police force, but woe betide anyone who offends a regime that criminalises homosexuals, persecutes its critics and treats women as an inferior species. The use of the word ‘racist’ to describe a banner criticising the Saudi authorities is a sordid sign of the times. It confirms that terms like ‘racist’ and ‘Islamophobia’ are increasingly being used to circumscribe everyday political discussion. The brand of ‘Islamophobe’ has been deployed for years as a means of controlling discussion about Islam and demonising anyone who is concerned about Islamic radicalism. It has been a form of blasphemy by the backdoor, where entirely legit criticisms of a religion and its more extreme expressions come to be slyly denounced as forms of bigotry. Now, in this police enquiry into a fans’ banner criticising a ruthless Islamist regime, we can see just how entrenched this Orwellian development has become. Cops in the UK are essentially doing the bidding of Saudi censors, and that really is not on."
Liberal logic: it is racist to criticise Saudi Arabia, but anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism is good
Acting could soon be a hate crime - "Scotland’s new hate-crime bill could result in actors being punished for portraying offensive characters. The SNP’s disdain for free speech is not even limited to real people... Even the Scottish wing of the Labour Party – hardly a reliable friend of free speech – has criticised the bill. It is not clear who gets to decide what is likely to stir up hatred, or how that hatred is defined. This ambiguity has led the Law Society of Scotland to express its concern that ‘even an actor’s performance, which might well be deemed insulting or offensive, could result in a criminal conviction under the terms of the bill’."
Preacher locked up for hate crime after quoting the Bible to gay teenager - "A Christian evangelist was accused of a hate crime and locked up in a cell after preaching from the Bible to a gay teenager. Gordon Larmour, 42, was charged by police after telling the story of Adam and Eve to a 19-year-old who asked him about God’s views on homosexuality. The street preacher referred to the Book of Genesis and stated that God created Adam and Eve to produce children. Within minutes he was frogmarched to a police van, accused of threatening or abusive behaviour 'aggravated by prejudice relating to sexual orientation' - despite not swearing or using any form of offensive language. The father-of-one spent a night in custody and faced a six-month ordeal before a sheriff cleared him of any blame. The incident, which occurred in his home town of Irvine in Ayrshire, has become a rallying point for Christian campaigners who are concerned that freedom of speech is being stifled by political correctness."
