Mick Hartley

From the Times, some examples of non-crime hate incidents investigated by the police:

Police forces across Britain, responding to freedom of information requests, revealed that hate incidents were being logged against people in authority doing their jobs.

A doctor was cited for allegedly misdiagnosing a patient and “a vicar from the local church” was called a “suspect” of a hate incident for saying it was a sin to be gay.

Police data also revealed that someone was the subject of a hate complaint for calling a Welsh victim a “sheep shagger” and another person was reported for asking whether a Chinese meal came “with bats”….

Surrey police logged a hate incident after a couple were asked to leave a pub upon being accused of having sex in the establishment’s toilets. The force said one of the couple was transgender and it was alleged that the actions taken by the pub were “hate-related”. It maintained that the NCHI was correct.

In south Wales a lesbian couple believed they were targeted with a dead rat on their doorstep. They conceded that rats were common but claimed it had looked “placed”.

I suppose it's a lot easier to sit at a desk trawling through social media looking for nasty comments than to actually go out and deal with violent criminals. 

The chances of a positive intervention here from Home Secretary Yvette Cooper are not looking good:

Non-crime hate reports can ruin people’s job prospects and police should avoid using names when recording them, a former director of public prosecutions has said.

Lord Macdonald, who was previously the head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), has urged Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, not to weaken restrictions on the police use of non-crime hate reports introduced by Suella Braverman, her Tory predecessor.

People who are reported by police for non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) can have the details passed onto a prospective employer under an enhanced disclosure and barring service (DBS) check for jobs such as teaching, social work and childcare.

Children are among thousands of people who have been investigated by police for NCHIs. Lord Macdonald said it was “beyond belief” that they could have their names attached to NCHIs that could affect their prospects in later life.

Police forces recorded incidents against a nine-year-old who called a primary school classmate a “retard” and against two secondary school girls who said that another pupil smelt “like fish”

Last year, Mrs Braverman, the home secretary at the time, raised the threshold because of free speech concerns.

It meant NCHIs should only be recorded if they were “clearly motivated by intentional hostility” and there was a “real risk of escalation causing significant harm or a criminal offence”.

Ms Cooper is planning to reverse this for anti-Semitic and Islamophobic abuse, which she is concerned is being overlooked because of the new threshold that prevents police from recording incidents that could escalate into serious violence or crime.