Police Sacked Hate Crime Adviser Who Warned Force Favoured Muslims Over Jews

The chair of a police scrutiny panel has been sacked after accusing officers, at a meeting on last October’s antisemitic attack on a synagogue in Manchester, of dodging the “elephant in the room” – Islamist extremism – and appeasing Muslims. The Telegraph has the story:

She was told she was being removed as chairman of the Bradford Hate Crime Scrutiny Panel because of her “divisive and inflammatory” comments, which had prompted complaints from Muslim police officers taking part in the meeting. …

The woman, a retired academic in her 60s, told the Telegraph that the letter informing her of her removal from the security panel “sounded like a threat” because the senior officer who wrote it implied that complainants had been demanding her personal details and that consideration had been given to whether she had committed a hate crime.

She suggested the letter had been written “for the Muslim men who complained to get him to shut me up – and he did as they asked”. …

The former panel chairman, who has asked not to be named, is now seeking a formal apology from Sir John Robins, the West Yorkshire Police Chief Constable.

She is being helped by the Free Speech Union and its founder, Lord Young, who suggested the force was “more concerned with protecting the feelings of Muslim community leaders than protecting Jews from terrorist attacks”.

The distinguished academic was approached in 2022 to volunteer on the scrutiny panel. Its purpose was to monitor how the police responded to hate crime reports and it also covered stop-and-search incidents where force was used.

She was later elected as chairman, but within months Muslim police officers began demanding her removal.

In April last year, the panel reviewed the case of a man who had been charged with a hate crime after he rang a police helpline and told the Muslim call handler that the Prophet Mohammed was a paedophile, citing disputed historical evidence that Mohammed married a six year-old called Aisha and consummated the marriage when she was nine.

The panel chairman argued that, while what the man had said was “deeply unpleasant”, it was not a crime, because criticising a religious figure is not a criminal offence.

A panel of lawyers agreed with her and the case was downgraded to a non-crime hate incident, but it led to calls from West Yorkshire Police staff for her removal. …

In October last year, following the synagogue attack in Manchester, the panel chairman was invited to take part in an emergency meeting held online to discuss how West Yorkshire Police should respond.

The woman felt that too much of the meeting was spent discussing the needs of Muslims and advising them on how they could arrange for extra security at mosques, rather than concentrating on the needs of the Jewish community that had been the target of the terrorist attack by Islamist killer Jihad Al-Shamie.

She spoke up to suggest that there should be an open discussion about the threat from Islamist terrorists, and was told after the meeting that she had been removed from her role as a member and chairman of the scrutiny panel because she had failed to show impartiality as chairman.

Speaking to the Telegraph’s Allison Pearson, Elaine (who asked for her name to be changed) reveals the moment she first realised the full extent to which West Yorkshire Police were prioritising Muslim sensitivities over Jewish safety and shutting down criticism of Islam. Here’s an excerpt:

“I could not believe what I was hearing,” Elaine recalls. “I was taking part in this emergency Teams meeting hosted by West Yorkshire Police that day after the horrific attack on the synagogue. It was chaired by a white female inspector. She was very fair, very strict and didn’t take any nonsense, but she was under constant pressure from the Muslim men in the meeting…

“The whole meeting wasn’t about what it should have been about. [It should have been about], ‘How can we protect the Bradford synagogue and the Jewish population?” Instead, she says, much “[was about], ‘We Muslims need protecting because we are now at risk of anti-Muslim reprisals.’”

“The perpetrator hadn’t been [named] yet,” Elaine adds, but a significant number of those on the call – about 25 people – seemed to think there was a good chance he was Muslim. “Community leaders, people from the council and police… were all insisting we couldn’t possibly know who the killer was or what his motives were. At the same time, [community leaders] were demanding: ‘What are you going to do to protect Muslims? We’re going to be attacked because of this, so the mosques need 24/7 security.’” …

For three years, Elaine served dutifully on the Hate Crime Scrutiny Panel, eventually becoming chairman. Despite winning a vote to lead the panel, there was a clear reluctance to tell her so and to depose the incumbent (a Muslim man). It was only after repeated nagging over several months that Elaine’s appointment was finally confirmed in December 2024. “It’s my understanding that, when I was chair, Bradford was the only police scrutiny panel in West Yorkshire not to be chaired by a Muslim man,” she says.

It was in her capacity as panel chairman that Elaine was invited to that emergency meeting after the deadly attack at the synagogue. “I was totally gobsmacked by what I heard,” she says. The woman police inspector who was chairing said: “Our activities are intelligence-led. There is no intelligence of any danger to any mosques.” She repeated that fact several times. “But the men kept on about how worried they were, [saying]: ‘Our women are too afraid to go out, and we need police protection and CCTV.’” …

The next day, the Teams meeting reconvened, but the white female police inspector had been replaced by a Muslim male inspector. (No explanation was offered for the change at the time.) He began by saying that “all places of worship in Bradford” would now be monitored, Elaine says. By then, they knew the identity of the Manchester terrorist, Jihad Al-Shamie, a Muslim of Syrian descent. Surely, the job of the Hate Crime Scrutiny Panel should be to discuss ways to address the problem of extremism within parts of the Muslim community?

Elaine was astonished when it became clear that, despite everything that had been said the previous day, additional security measures would now be put in place for mosques. “So, 24 hours ago, there was no intelligence of any threats to any mosques, and suddenly, we’ve got a 180-degree turn. I’m sure that lobbying had gone on,” she says.

As the meeting went on in the same surreal, evasive vein, Elaine finally decided to say something. “Of course, I was intimidated. I knew that I was sticking my head over the top, but I had such a sense of injustice about the victims and the rest of the Jewish community that I knew I had to speak out. To have stayed silent in order to keep in line with a false narrative about the synagogue attack putting Muslims at risk would have been unconscionable.”

She deliberately chose her words with care, telling the meeting that the people there represented all communities in Bradford. She said they had to address “the elephant in the room. We know who the attacker is and what community he comes from. We’ve got to be able to address this openly, and if we can’t do it here, there’s no hope.”

The chairman of the committee immediately jumped in and started talking loudly over Elaine. She refused to back down, saying: “Chairman, you said that all places of worship in Bradford will be kept an eye on. Does that include churches?” The chairman floundered and waffled “word salad”, eventually saying there was no intelligence of any threat to churches. “OK, that’s fine. It’s just mosques. Thank you,” Elaine recalls herself saying. It rankled that the panel had initially refused to acknowledge that they were talking about securing mosques, not, as the chairman claimed, all places of worship.

Another meeting had been planned for the following Monday, but Elaine didn’t get the usual notification ahead of time. She soon found out why – she had been sacked.

Worth reading in full.