© ReutersA 14-year-old girl has taken police in Britain to court over recording a classroom comment as a 'non-crime hate incident
Over 35 years in policing, I lived and worked through some of the most infamous crimes of racial or homophobic bigotry. You will have heard of many of them. If I was not involved in the investigations or managing the tragic aftermath, I knew those who did personally. I met many of the victims or their families. I know the inside stories, what really happened.
At the weekend, the Daily Mail revealed that police in England and Wales have now recorded and investigated more than 120,000 reports of 'hate', none of which has been regarded as a crime. Paul Giannassi OBE, a police superintendent and spokesman for the National Police Chiefs Council, believes that these non-crime incidents may be the starting point in an escalating process that could lead to murder. He may be right; in my experience, an argument or verbal abuse can sometimes lead to extreme violence or death. However, the problem is that not a single police force in England or Wales has provided any evidence that this is the case with these 'hate' incidents.
So why do we have this peculiar type of 'hybrid incident', where police do not record a crime, but as part of their investigation may arrest you, record your details, and even take your DNA, potentially generating unfavourable and unwarranted data that may stay with you for many years? When you consider that those who call the police in the first place might be doing so out of some malicious intent, or an overexcited woke view of the world, this is quite a disturbing thought. There is not much you can do about it if it happens.
Comment: This is why ideological revolutions always lead to tyranny: the don't align with reality. The solutions offered - which always appear self-evidently true and sure to fix the problem in question - never work, because they are founded upon a cartoonish view of human nature. So it shouldn't really be a surprise what's going on. Hate crime legislation like this will not only lead to more crime; it will probably produce new hate crimes. All in the name of social justice.