A former Metropolitan Police Commissioner has urged Ministers to review the use of non-crime hate incidents in the wake of the investigation into journalist Allison Pearson. The Telegraph has the story.
A new report, published on Monday by the Policy Exchange think tank, urges ministers to abolish the recording of the incidents by police after finding they take up 60,000 hours of officers’ time every year and distract them from fighting crime.
In response, Lord Hogan-Howe said the Government should study the report and consider whether police should be investigating the incidents at all.
His comments come after a row sparked by the investigation into Allison Pearson.
The award-winning Telegraph journalist was visited by Essex Police officers at her home on Remembrance Sunday, who told her she was being investigated for inciting racial hatred with a post on social media from a year before. The force later dropped the investigation.
While Pearson was being investigated for a crime, it prompted widespread scrutiny and criticism of non-crime hate incidents, which do not meet the criminal threshold but are recorded by police.
Lord Hogan-Howe is the most senior policing figure to criticise non-crime hate incidents.
He said the original aim to log incidents that could lead to racist attacks after the murder of Stephen Lawrence was “well-intentioned”, but the way the rules had been introduced had led to “little debate about their efficacy”.
The Peer said police had no powers to investigate or interview “suspects” in non-crime hate incidents, which meant it had caused public concern when officers had done so.
Worth reading in full.
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