Mick Hartley

Reinforcing a point made yesterday, Jo Bartosch at UnHerd – Scrapping NCHIs is not the end of the thought police:

Britain’s unrepentant thought-criminals have cheered following the news that the Metropolitan Police has promised to stop probing non-crime hate incidents. The irony, of course, is that the police never investigated NCHIs in the first place: the entire category is a bureaucratic afterbirth of complaints which failed to meet the criminal threshold for a hate crime. An NCHI is merely a record that someone has taken offence to another’s words or actions.

And that will continue.

The persistence of NCHIs points to a deeper malaise. Today’s officers aren’t merely enforcing laws — they’re policing social orthodoxy. And at a time when every misstep can be shared online, perception matters more than ever. Already this week, a video has gone viral of a Jewish man being told by officers that his Star of David necklace might cause “offence” to pro-Palestinian demonstrators.

British policing rests on the fragile principle of consent — the understanding that the public cooperates because it trusts the police to act impartially. By siding with activists against majority opinion, officers have squandered that trust, alienating the very people whose cooperation they depend on: the ordinary, law-abiding public. The Met’s slippery statement suggests the top brass may, at last, sense the danger. But until they stop policing opinion instead of crime, they risk finding themselves in a country where no one consents to being policed at all.

Though according to the Times, all police forces may soon stop recording non-crime hate incidents:

A review of the police’s recording of non-crime hate incidents has recommended that all forces scrap the practice, The Times can reveal.

The College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council will advise the home secretary that the incidents should no longer be recorded by any force in England and Wales.

An interim report submitted last week to Sarah Jones, the policing minister, urged that the practice be dropped. The final review is expected to be delivered to Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, in December.

That would be good. If it’s a non-crime, then why would the police be involved? Seems simple enough.