Teen with Aspergers convicted of transgender hate crime, he asked is that a boy or a girl.

Echobelly how can you possibly decide he deliberately targeted the PCSO? Honestly. Are you this lad’s doctor? Because if not you haven’t got a bloody clue.

maybe he shouldn't have received a criminal charge

Maybe? Even if it was 100% deliberate people should not be facing criminal charges for this. This is Orwellian nonsense even before you get to the futility of trying to get Aspies to lie bit.

TBF, the PCSO looks and sounds totally male to me and I don't see anything about him that would lead anyone to guess he was trans.

So if the guy accused really did say repeatedly 'Are you a boy or a girl?' it does not sound like an innocent mistake of social misunderstanding. It sounds like he knew Freel was trans and was trying to upset and humiliate him. It's possible he didn't understand the full impact of his words, and maybe he shouldn't have received a criminal charge, but it does look very much as though he targeted Freel deliberately I'm afraid.

I’m still struggling to get over the figures: less than 2% of rape cases prosecuted vs 84% of hate crimes. Christ.

And YY Errol it doesn’t sound like he is well-supported . I doubt anyone thought to even look out for him as at 19 he’s not going to need an appropriate adult is he. If the police force is all woke then being dragged in for upsetting one of their Very Special PCSOs isn’t going to fly. I wonder how many of them in custody privately thought it was all a bit fucking much but felt unable to say so publicly. I think that’s a total cop-out (excuse the pun) but I can see how it might happen. That poor kid. I also think FFS, he’s already got significant hurdles to clear to gain employment, have a social life etc. He’s a carer. And now he’s got a hate crime conviction. 19 years old and he doesn’t stand a chance. TOTALLY FINE with young sportsmen raping girls though, wouldn’t want to throw the book at them in case it ruined their career, hey CPS?

What's next? Pronoun jail for toddlers? Because good luck getting them not to do the "mummy is that a man?" thing.

I wonder if this isn't a direct action opportunity - report every incidence of street harassment, so they understand the magnitude of what women put up with as a matter of course.

And it seems the first to be confined and denied participation in public life will be the ASD kids

Yes and this teen has already been given a curfew.
I can not belive that he has been given a fine of 590 pounds and a curfew for shouting is it a boy or girl.
I wonder how he will understand what has happened?
I wonder what autism groups are thinking about this.
Snowblight come on please, do you really believe that this teen with aspergers was trying to be hurtful? He was saying something as he saw it.
Try to have some empthay for anyone who has aspergers autism or their family.The posters on this tread who are afraid for their children or themself's because of this.
How did we get here? People with developmental disorders are crimalised for speaking.

The more people such as this who are recruited into the police force, the more money will be wasted on certain "hate crimes", leading to more serious crimes being overlooked.
Our council tax is funding this.

my dd feels this is 'unfair' as she would also like to wear trousers...

She’s damn right that’s unfair. Next logical stop is claiming to be a boy so that she can. Child/teen behaviour is often ‘functional’ (ie, it meets some kind of need, often unconscious).

Anyway, having slept on it I’m more angry than ever. As someone said on Facebook, if we could all get those who shout comments at us in the street on a curfew, the world would soon start looking like the opening scene from 28 Days Later.

And it seems the first to be confined and denied participation in public life will be the ASD kids who don’t really get the unspoken rules of social life (and worse still, the ones like my lad who is both ASD and ADHD, and the ADHD mostly manifests as a problem with impulse control).

Autistic people have only really had their struggles recognised in recent years, with people starting to understand that it’s not always possible to just ‘stop being so rude’ or that rigid/logical thinking isn’t belligerence, but simply neurodifference.
Well, It seems like the Woke Police are going to shit all over that understanding. We can’t let that happen.

Could the boys parents appeal?

Sounds unlikely from this (near the end of the piece):

The court heard Armstrong, who acts as a carer for a man he considers his father..

Could the boys parents appeal? Seems a grossly unfair decision which does not take into account the fact he has ASD, I imagine his legal representation was crap, if he had any at all.

I expect this thread to be misrepresented so just for the purposes of clarity, the general concern here is that the Public Order Act 1986 says:

A person is guilty of an offence [of causing intentional distress] if, with intent to cause a person ... distress, he uses ... insulting words [or distributes or displays to another person any writing, sign or other visible representation] ... thereby causing that or another person ... distress..

and that in the vast majority of cases the Police will ignore you if you ask them to enforce this law but in certain cases, if the Police and the CPS consider you to be on their list of special people, and it suits the Police and the CPS, then they'll push hard on enforcement of the law.

The problem is there's a stupidly broad law that is only enforced according to the whims of the Police and the CPS meaning that if they don't view you favourably, for example you're a woman getting street harassment, you don't get protected. It's simply bad for the law to operate like that.

I have 3 children with ASD, this worries me alot my daughter's is in secondary school and has already got into trouble at school for 'misgendering' and 'deadnaming' they have a strict uniform policy and now the girls who says they are boys can wear trousers, my dd feels this is 'unfair' as she would also like to wear trousers... She also finds it difficult to remember the new names as she has used the previous names for a couple of years, now she is worried she will say something wrong and get into trouble...
She has also suggested a number of times she might be trans as she would like to wear trousers to school... Tbh I am very concerned staff members will hear this and lead her down the path saying she is trans.

God, I get harassed all the time while I’m out. The other day I got followed and repeatedly asked by an aggressive young man, ‘are you blind... are you blind... are you blind!’ I ignored him so he called me a miserable bitch and said ‘I hope you walk in front of a bus.’ I also get asked if I’m a man or a woman all the time, and straight up homophobic comments. I didn’t know they were all hate crimes, I just ignore them because, well, because I’m sure the police have better things to do with their time than have me on the phone every day tattling about some rude twat I encountered on the street.

I’d try calling them, but I doubt they’d be much interested, seeing as I’m one of those cis privileged female oppressors, and besides, I’ve got better things to do than devote my life to arseholes.

Maybe I should start? I’ll let you know how I go on shall I?

Incidentally, if there are any Thames Valley police reading this thread, what are you doing about the 5 lads who launched a campaign of bullying and assaulting my son, culminating in them jumping him, beating the bejesus out of him and nicking his bike? I still haven’t heard anything about that and it’s been 5 months now.

We might as well take a note of this person’s name, as I imagine PCSO won’t be in the force for long, once the local thugs know this PCSO is trans. So well done PCSO, if people weren’t sure before, you’ve just well and truly outed yourself and I imagine you’ll find this isn’t the last person to hurt your ‘feelings’. 🙄

I wonder how long it will be before they sue the force because they haven’t felt ‘supported’ enough, because all those nasty people won’t pretend that people can change sex?

This has been going on forever with people with autism. 13 years ago my then 6 year old was excluded from primary school for being racist. His crime? He asked why his friend had a brown face!!!!!

Tirisfal Yes that was my reaction - the whole thing while ridiculous in general specifically sounds so ableist. Are they going to arrest and fine every person with autism who asks an inappropriate question in public now?

@JanMeyer - my mistake. I thought the reason my autistic child uses a keyboard in class, has 1-2-1 support and 25% extra time in exams meant that he has a learning disability. He is not intellectually impaired so I've obviously got the terminology wrong.

Hard to see it as anything other than discriminatory. For autistic people, saying what we see isn’t an option we might choose if we want to be rude or offensive. It’s our only option. Unless you want to make ‘talking while autistic’ illegal - and feels like it’s rapidly going that way.

This kid was rude. However, he should have been given the chance to apologize, and if he did so, then that should have been the end of it.

I think that this officer should re-consider whether or not field work is right for him. He may be better suited to a desk job. Sadly, when working with the public, you have to deal with insults occasionally. I used to work in retail, and I frequently had to deal with sexism, classism, and remarks about my appearance. It never even occurred to me to go to the police. I assumed I'd be laughed out of the station!

This cop should lose his job. He obviously doesn't pass as well as he thinks he does, and if he can't put on his big boy pants to serve the public's needs while he is on duty, instead using his time to arrest citizens because someone hurt his feelings, then he doesn't deserve to be employed as a police officer. This gent is a weak bully who is abusing the public trust.

Black Forest, I also don’t expect CPS to indulge and validate those fantasies either.
It’s madness.
As a PC I’ve been threatened with rape and violence on too many occasions. Been punched, bitten, spat at, knocked unconscious and had bones broken. Hurt feelings I don’t complain about.

this Is insane