Mick Hartley

From West Yorkshire Police, on the autistic girl debacle:

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They've "made the decision to take no further action". Hmm. It's not like that's the big-relief decision we've been waiting for. Of course they're not going to take further action in prosecuting the young girl. We knew that. There was absolutely nothing to prosecute, unless – which seems very unlikely at this stage – they're holding back a vital piece of evidence which will shed a whole new light on proceedings and will be released in due course.

What we want to know is how six (seven?) police officers ended up arresting an autistic girl for a public order offence in her own home, for a "homophobic" remark which, if the mother is to be believed, wasn't homophobic in the least. Why the bullying? – the unnecessary force? – the despicable contempt shown to this clearly terrified young girl?

No apology; no awareness of why this is such an issue. It's all plod-speak: "We do appreciate the understandable sensitivities around incidents involving young people and neurodiversity and we are genuinely committed to developing how we respond to these often very challenging situations".

Yes, there's an ongoing review, but at the moment it looks like they're just trying to sweep it under the carpet and hope that we all forget it ever happened.