The Free Speech Union and Fair Cop, the campaigning group led by ex-copper Harry Miller, have written a joint letter to the Home Secretary threatening legal action if she removes the constraints on the police’s recording and retention of ‘non-crime hate incidents’. The Sun has more.
Mr. Young said: “The idea that forcing the police to spend more time investigating ‘non-crime’ is going to reduce actual crime is bonkers.
“Burglars and car thieves will have a free hand, knowing the police are too busy reading our tweets to police our streets.”
Woke police had sparked huge controversy by tracking ‘non-criminal hate crimes’ in recent years.
The policy saw police files opened on a number of bizarre and trivial incidents.
Cops opened a “hate incident” file after an 11 year-old boy was called “shorty” back in 2022.
Last year, then Cabinet minister David T.C. Davies was investigated for a non-crime hate incident after he sent a leaflet to his Welsh constituents about a proposed new travellers site in the area.
After a series of legal challenges, a new police code telling officers they should only record non-crime hate talk when absolutely necessary was unveiled last year.
Ms. Cooper wants to reverse this change because of a rise in anti-Semitic and Islamophobic incidents.
Mr. Young’s letter to the Home Sec – seen by the Sun on Sunday – states: “We ask for your assurance that the proposed reversal… will not happen.
“Should this assurance not be forthcoming, we put you on notice… we will take legal action to force you and the College of Policing to comply with the law.”
The letter is also signed by ex-police officer Harry Miller.
Mr. Miller was dragged through the courts and ended up being slapped with a ‘non-crime hate incident’ on his crime report after he sent tweets criticising the idea of changing gender.
He won a legal challenge against the move, with the Court of Appeal ruling that his right to freedom of expression had been breached.
Reports of non crime hate incidents can show up on a criminal record for six years.
Worth reading in full.
Here is a key passage from the FSU and Fair Cop’s joint letter:
We were alarmed to read in yesterday’s papers of your desire to see more NCHIs recorded by police forces in England and Wales. According to a report in the Telegraph, Home Office officials, at your urging, are considering a new “zero-tolerance” approach to ensure that specifically antisemitic and Islamophobic ‘hate speech’ that falls short of criminality is recorded by police.
A Home Office source – presumably one of your Special Advisors – is quoted as saying: “The Home Office has committed to reverse the decision of the previous government to downgrade the monitoring of antisemitic and Islamophobic hate, at a time when rates of those incidents have increased.”
“It is vital,” the source added, “that the police can capture data relating to non-crime hate incidents when it is proportionate and necessary to do so in order to help prevent serious crimes which may later occur.”The source appears to be unaware that the reason the threshold for the recording and retention of NCHIs was raised by the previous government was to bring the practice into line with the Court of Appeal’s judgment in Miller v The College of Policing [2021] EWCA Civ 1926, not because Suella Braverman was less concerned than you about “antisemitic and Islamophobic ‘hate speech’”. According to the Court of Appeal, the manner in which NCHIs were being recorded and retained when the threshold was lower – and the operational guidance police forces were following – was a breach of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR” or the “Convention”), as brought into British law by the Human Rights Act 1996 (“HRA”), as well as the Data Protection Act 2018 (“DPA”). We are concerned that if the statutory Code of Practice introduced by the last government is withdrawn, which appears to be your intention, and the College of Policing is once again given a free hand when it comes to drawing up operational guidance relating to NCHIs, police forces in England and Wales will start breaking the law again.
Stop Press 2: The Telegraph has a piece on the same story here.
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