Police forces record thousands of hate incidents each year even though they accept they are not crimes

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  • Police forces are recording thousands of hate incidents even though they accept that they are not crimes.

    More than 87,000 ‘non-crime hate incidents’ have been recorded by 27 forces in England and Wales over the past five years, when the national policing body introduced its Hate Crime Operational Guidelines.

    The guidelines state that an incident - perceived to be motivated by hostility towards religion, race or transgender identity - must be recorded “irrespective of whether there is any evidence to identify the hate element” and can even show up on an individual’s DBS check, despite them not committing a crime.

    The figures, obtained by the Daily Telegraph through Freedom of Information requests, come as the proportion of actual crimes being solved by stretched police forces across the country have fallen to the lowest level ever recorded.

    From 2015 to 2019, the number of criminal offences for which someone was charged or summonsed fell from 15.5 per cent to 7.8 per cent, according to statistics from the Home Office.

    Violent crime is also on the rise, with the number of offences involving a knife increasing from 41,000 to just over 44,000 from June 2018 to 2019.

    The forces with the highest number of ‘non-crime hate incidents’ recordings are the Metropolitan Police, Merseyside and Surrey Police, which have recorded 9,473, 8,644 and 8,256 incidents over the past five years respectively.

    One force, Cheshire Constabulary, even admitted to recording hate incidents where there is no criminal evidence in the same system as those that are crimes.

    Senior officers within both Merseyside and the Met have previously warned how their officers are stretched beyond capacity and have "a real difficulty" in answering all critical calls.

    Cressida Dick, the Met Police commissioner and Britain’s most senior police officer, has previously warned that recording hate crimes divert officers from fighting the top priority of reducing violent crime.

    “In my view, we should be focusing on the things that the public tell me they care about most,” Ms Dick said in November 2018. “My officers are very busy, they are very stretched. We have young people in London subject to gang violence, getting involved in drug dealing, stabbings, lots and lots of priorities.”

    The FOI figures come after a judicial review was brought in the High Court against the National College of Policing for their hate crime guidelines by former police officer Harry Miller.

    Mr Miller, a married father of four, was investigated by a ‘community cohesion officer’ from Humberside Police - which has recorded more than 6,000 incidents - following a complaint that he had written something transphobic on Twitter.

    The presiding judge in Mr Miller’s case, Mr Justice Julian Knowles, expressed surprise at the College of Policing’s rule that there does not need to be any evidence of hate in order for the incident to be recorded.

    “That doesn’t make sense to me. How can it be a hate incident if there is no evidence of the hate element?,” he asked barristers representing the police at a hearing in November.

    In legal documents lodged before the High Court, lawyers representing the College argued that the guidelines are necessary because “police now take an active role in the resolution of conflict within and between communities.”

    “The role of British police today goes beyond bringing offenders to justice when they commit crimes,” they added.

    The decision on Mr Miller's judicial review against the College of Policing is expected in January 2020.

    John Apter, National Chair of the Police Federation, said: "This is a really difficult issue for policing. It is right that we must prioritise those crimes in action such as emergencies, violence and burglaries.

    “However for some people, these so called low level incidents, which are not considered to be crimes, can feel like bullying and harassment and can have a very negative impact on them.”

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/01/0…ar-even-though/

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    Police transgender rules breach right to free speech, court told

    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/n…eech-court-told

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    Policeman’s anti-trans views can’t be hate speech because they form ‘legitimate public debate’, court told

    https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2019/11/21/hat…llege-policing/

    PDF in below link.........

    College of Policing guidelines on hate crime instructed it be recorded.

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  • "Crimes" or "speech"??

    A crime is that defined in law as such. It was a crime to batter a burglar who was not an imminent physical threat....now it is not a crime (providing you only use as much force as is necessary being of that state of mind)

    I do not think any speech (statements uttered) should be a crime if words said do not incite to action.

    I can say -- I dont like Irish people. I can not say ... I dont like Irish people they should be beaten up.

  • The whole thing IMO is a can of worms and honestly there should be a fair debate about this without accusing people of hate crimes, racist or homophobic or any other labels they can draw out of a hat. Yes some do deserve a label if they physically bring harm to someone which words can't do, but when you have the police playing judge and jury and putting a black mark on someone's record that can then affect things like DBS checks which then effects employment, and we have enough unemployment already. Note it only takes an anonymous person to report a comment online and they don't always follow through with checks to verify and others might receive deeper investigation and a knock on the front door or worse. Serious questions needs to raised as to the value and worth of our police and what they should be doing. FFS it's not even their job (or shouldn't be) to play judge and jury. This is communism, Stasi style state policing.

    Yep it's wrong and it's quite simply an invasion on freedom of speech and works against against what we call and label as a democratically free country. People have the right to voice an opinion or speak a certain way if we live in a free country. If for arguments sake there was someone who was genuinely a racist or homophobic and stood up in speakers corner in Hyde Park and started mouthing off what they have to say, would they be charged. Something to think about there considering what speakers corner stands for. Now that's getting to the roots of democracy and freedom right there. Our politics and what we call democracy is falling apart and we are moving more towards the politics of someone like Hitler who discriminated. See the problem here is that discrimination and hate can fall either way. What's good for the goose is good for gander so to speak. It can't be a one way argument and telling someone they can't be discriminative when our political and policing system is being discriminative.

    There something seriously wrong with what we call democracy and freedom when what we say is being restricted and we are being victimised for it. It's not right is it. Or are we really moving more towards communism and state policing, monitoring and filing records on everyone like the Stasi. If so then for politicians to go and lay reefs on the cenotaph is an insult to all those that died fighting in the great war for our freedom. It's hypocrisy.

  • MP David Lammy incited racism and hate. Nothing happened to him. He has been reported to the police. I reported him to the police. Nothing will happen because he is black, its a simple as that.

    The man regularly spout hateful crap. I am a free speech absolutist I dont want him arrested but I reported him because he is so vocal and because white people are arrested when they speak in the same tone as Lammy.

  • MP David Lammy incited racism and hate. Nothing happened to him. He has been reported to the police. I reported him to the police. Nothing will happen because he is black, its a simple as that.

    The man regularly spout hateful crap. I am a free speech absolutist I dont want him arrested but I reported him because he is so vocal and because white people are arrested when they speak in the same tone as Lammy.

    White people in the U.K are treated differently, we have not that right to say what we want where as the U.S as. Political correctness.

  • There something seriously wrong with what we call democracy and freedom when what we say is being restricted and we are being victimised for it. It's not right is it

    Do you seriously think it is right for someone to be able to spout freely hatred against say "brown skinned people", "homosexuals", "the monarchy", and anybody that they choose to vent their bile at?

    I prefer the present laws that deal with such bigots

  • It's not nice or even justified at times but everyone has the right to say what the hell they like. It causes no physical harm and if one does not like it then shove your fingers in your ears or don't listen to it. Let it in one ear and out the other. Put on the ignore list. Stick and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me. If people have a problem with it then it's them that have the problem, grow some balls, toughen up and don't take things to heart. It's our mouth and our muscles on our own physical self and we don't need a puppeteer controlling the strings.

    Maybe in the future someone might try to install a pre programmed chip in our brains. We don't have to all be assimilated and comply to the Borg and a one track mind. Where do we draw the line. Nobody has the right to tell us what we can and can't do to our own bodies and self and remove our individual identity. It's about respect and that works both ways. I wont repeat half the things I hear because it's not my belief and I have more respect for most others, MP's being the exception LOL but I'm not going to impose a restriction on others not to speak their own beliefs. Actions speak louder than words. It may even be worth growing a thick skin and listening to what others have to say as you never know, they may end up changing your views on something or teaching you something that you never considered. You don't always have to agree but it's worth listening, and how they decide to express themselves and their opinions is up to them.

    Strangely this is one area where I think the US are right. There's that racist Bigot homophobic idiot religious family that Louis Theroux done some episodes on preaching with their placards. I don't agree with them but they have every right to do what they do and say what they say. It's their choice. As soon as we start choosing things like your Black so it's alright if you call your mate the N word or sing it in a rap song but your white so you can't say that to your Black mate or you will be nicked. This is being selective and choosing whatever fits the political agenda like Hitler done. The problem is that language evolves and it means different things to different people. You can say one word to one person and it may mean something to them they find insulting but you say it to someone else and it means something totally different. It's a very personal thing language and can be interpreted in many different ways.

    This is not even about language, hate speech, racism or whatever label you want to attach to it. It's about conforming to a political agenda that one might not believe in. Assimilation, brainwashing, indoctrination or whatever you want to call it. A gollywog to me means Robinsons jam. Nothing more and nothing less. It might mean something else to someone else, well..that's their problem not mine and I don't need them imposing their views on me. They can explain how they see it if they want and I will listen to their opinion and it might make me see things from another angle. But if I decide to keep that gollywog because it symbolises something else to me then that's my right and I certainly don't need it imposed on me that it means something else so I can't have it. It's sad how the swastika has been turned into something other than it's roots which come from peace. We should be allowed to happily wear one or fly as a symbol of peace if we wished without having the other interpretation of it imposed on us. Someone could have a swastika tattoo and are automaticity considered to be a Natzi. This not necessarily true but people will still call them that because they have been indoctrinated. Strangely I have a huge cuddly toy gollywog up in the loft. I won it in a readers digest competition many years ago. I also have a load of badges from where I collected the stamps on the Jam jars but I'm not a racist.

    The context in how something is used or said is more important. Writing something online can easily be misunderstood and many unjustifiably punished for it. We need to be cutting down on crime not creating it by bringing out new laws, especially when it's something as ambiguous as speech. Anyway it's not plods job to play judge and jury.

  • Anyway it's not plods job to play judge and jury.

    Plods job is to implement the law and the law is quite specific about hate crimes. If you don't like those laws then you must campaign to get them changed

  • It's their job to investigate what they suspect maybe a crime, gather the evidence, arrest the person and provide the evidence to CPS to decide whether that person can be charged or not, taken to court or where they should go from there. It's not the job of police to play judge and jury and decide whether someone is guilty or not. It's their job to uphold the law not create it. We can't have the police force deciding who is guilty or not and then putting a black mark on someone's record that in affect is making them guilty and classing them as a criminal. On their own personal records yeh they can keep lists on who they suspect to be involved with criminal activity for internal investigations but they should not be putting this on public records accessible to a DBS check. People are getting blackmarked on hearsay.

  • It's their job to investigate what they suspect maybe a crime, gather the evidence, arrest the person and provide the evidence to CPS to decide whether that person can be charged or not, taken to court or where they should go from there. It's not the job of police to play judge and jury and decide whether someone is guilty or not. It's their job to uphold the law not create it. We can't have the police force deciding who is guilty or not and then putting a black mark on someone's record that in affect is making them guilty and classing them as a criminal. On their own personal records yeh they can keep lists on who they suspect to be involved with criminal activity for internal investigations but they should not be putting this on public records accessible to a DBS check. People are getting blackmarked on hearsay.T

    Ehey don't need to create it, the law is already there

  • I hate violent criminals, is that a hate crime?

    Our population has grown far quicker than our infrastructure. The increased taxes from the additional people could never have built the infrastructure we need. The justice system is a typical example of this. Our prisons are full, and we don't have the money to build more. So, in the meantime we are forced to ignore crime, and we are forced to give people light sentences. Simple as that !

    The intelligent are being oppressed so the stupid don't get offended

  • The increased taxes from the additional people could never have built the infrastructure we need.

    Funny isn't it that those increased taxes be used on vanity projects like HS2, increased taxes which do not include the tax benefits and cuts given to the very rich

  • Funny isn't it that those increased taxes be used on vanity projects like HS2, increased taxes which do not include the tax benefits and cuts given to the very rich

    It's the very very rich that give the rest of us jobs, don't forget it !

    The intelligent are being oppressed so the stupid don't get offended

  • It is not, it is successful companies

    How many jobs did the Duke of Westminster create?

    So you don't think he employs people? The majority of rich people own companies, or are company directors. These people are the backbone of our society.

    The intelligent are being oppressed so the stupid don't get offended

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