I have been recorded by my local police force as 'hateful'

I can sort of understand why people who are new to this can't quite grasp the problem and their first instinct is to assume that Sarah must have said something offensive.

And that’s an important part of Sarah’s point. She’s tarred with that brush because people glance and see “hate” and police and assume they must be doing it properly and there must be something to it. And that’s the aim of all this by these vexatious reporters. To tar someone, to blight their reputation, to take advantage of the fact people usually don’t look too deeply into the facts.

It’s like when people post “facts” on here with links they don’t expect people to click on and read, except they’re surprised when we do, analyse them and call bullshit. Unfortunately in most circumstances though, people just see word association and it sticks.

neko

but if this happened in 'real life' within a spoken conversation it would then be a he said she said type of situation where the police would have nothing to report as its just feelings, we are also socially conditioned that it isn't polite to talk about things like politics, money and sex within public places so these types on conversations are more likely to happen through friend groups where friendships would be broken when differing opinions on issues such as these, not have police reports filed

Your conversation could be overheard by a 3rd party, who could report you. And yes, feelings can be reported, there doesn't have to be evidence

I hope they do refuse to delete. This needs to be before a court. What is happening is wrong and cannot be left unchecked.

Indeed. Thanks for hopefully shining some sunlight on this whole sinister mess, Spero. Hopefully it will be picked up by the press.

My spade and I stand ready to dig for your victory.

I can sort of understand why people who are new to this can't quite grasp the problem and their first instinct is to assume that Sarah must have said something offensive.

It's difficult to comprehend that there is now this concept called 'hate incident' which the police themselves define as a non-crime and which allows anyone - literally anyone and not just the 'victim' - to report 'perceived hate' towards someone. It's so ludicrous.

This is not what we want a police force for.

It's unbelievable that it has come to this.

Someone said to think about what would happen off of the Internet, but if this happened in 'real life' within a spoken conversation it would then be a he said she said type of situation where the police would have nothing to report as its just feelings, we are also socially conditioned that it isn't polite to talk about things like politics, money and sex within public places so these types on conversations are more likely to happen through friend groups where friendships would be broken when differing opinions on issues such as these, not have police reports filed, whereas online it's easy to get worked up over things as people don't feel real, which is why I believe an alias to be best when discussing certain topics to avoid incidents like this happening, people lives are being ruined because of tweets and Facebook posts, and it's not going to get better anytime soon.

NekoShiro, you've admitted that you're still trying to educate yourself about this. The paragraph above demonstrates that you have poor understanding of the recording of hate incidents and what 'evidence' is required.

Read up on it - this is something that everyone needs to be aware of. Even more urgently if you're in Scotland.

What on Earth has happened to the police in this country, they appear to have taken leave of their senses.

Yes hate incidents are simply recorded. I can walk into my local police station and tell them that neighbour is a big fat transphobe who says women are not men etc. Recorded as a Hate Incident against her. Or I can say that she used the N word or the P word etc

I might also just not like her though ....

This is terrible. I don't have any social media accounts so all my GC posting is on here or verbally but I do dig regularly so as soon as any digging is required, I'll be there.

Would that come up on a disclosure check?

suggestionsplease1

That’s hate crimes. This is about hate incidents. Which means anything that offends anyone. No crime committed.

Reposting my comment from the Fair Cop thread:

[Sarah writes in her blog] "There are pages and pages of my ‘hate’ against transgender people where I say disgusting and offensive things like this:

The Equality Act does protect sex as a characteristic. But it isn’t one of the police’s bonkers protected strands for the purposes of hate crime/non crime as they know it would overwhelm them in about five minutes.

The police (rightly) took no further action commenting, ‘what she says is not offence [sic] no matter how disagreeable and offensive to the RP’ (reporting person). However, despite that inevitable conclusion, it is still recorded as a ‘hate incident’ against my name — which is helpfully set out in ALL CAPS. No third party reviewing that document will see the word ‘incident’. They will see the word ‘hate’.

The anodyne nature of the tweets and the fact that someone waited until December to report publications made in May, made me doubt that anyone could genuinely have been outraged. That doubt was cemented when I looked more closely at the screenshots and saw the words in bold: Jewish, hate, police, report, trans woman, Nazi. Someone had simply conducted an advanced search of my tweets using those keywords. Any outrage here was clearly manufactured.

I made a complaint to the police on the basis that this report was malicious. I was able to provide a wealth of evidence to support my assertion that I have been targeted and harassed online since 2016 by a group of people. The clearest evidence of malice in my view was the online boasting of one anonymous Twitter account which in June 2020 made repeated gleeful references to my now having a ‘record for life’ of my ‘hate’.

I asked the police to either delete this recording or if they would not do that, to delete all identifying details about me and simply refer to ‘a Wiltshire resident’. If they would not do that, my third and least favourite option would be to amend the record to include my objections and that I had provided evidence to support my assertion that this was a malicious complaint.

The police decided they would not delete but record my objections alongside this record, which will be kept for six years."

Wow. Sarah

Why can't the police anonymise these records? These 'incidents' are nothing like crimes, so the only purpose of logging them is statistical analysis - right? And even then, the value of the data is questionable when it includes 'incidents' like someone tweeting 'Huh.'

Exactly like I said before, the police need better guidelines written for what is deemed hateful, but there's always the issues of things becoming too specific and people falling through the cracks, like I said before I'm not purposely trying to upset any of you, I'm genuinely uneducated on the issues you're discussing and I'm trying to develop a better understanding.

Someone said to think about what would happen off of the Internet, but if this happened in 'real life' within a spoken conversation it would then be a he said she said type of situation where the police would have nothing to report as its just feelings, we are also socially conditioned that it isn't polite to talk about things like politics, money and sex within public places so these types on conversations are more likely to happen through friend groups where friendships would be broken when differing opinions on issues such as these, not have police reports filed, whereas online it's easy to get worked up over things as people don't feel real, which is why I believe an alias to be best when discussing certain topics to avoid incidents like this happening, people lives are being ruined because of tweets and Facebook posts, and it's not going to get better anytime soon.

I've had a lil browse through your twitter and it looks like more of a personal account than a professional one so why do you need to have your real name attached to it, they wouldn't of been able to report you to the police if they didn't know your name, obviously you can do whatever you want to do and yet again I'm not trying to say what your doing is bad but I hope some people will see this and untangle their personal and professional online lives to avoid such issues in the future.

I can only see this as a lesson on not allowing strangers to know who you are online so they can harass you.

I genuinely hope you get this police report removed, it's unnecessary and has wasted a lot of police time.

You would expect this kind of thing in Russia or China. What has happened to this country?

Slight derail but I remember watching the Stephen Lawrence documentary and thinking that Clive Driscoll - the old school cop who put the evidence together that nailed the killers - probably wouldn't get into the police now.

Thank you Spero for what you do and good luck.

Also seeing you out there, using your own name, is inspiring and humbling.

Nothing constructive to add, spero, other than to say I read your Fair Cop piece, was utterly appalled, and will dig when the time comes.

"The police and the CPS have agreed the following definition for identifying and flagging hate crimes:"

"Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person's disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; or religion or perceived religion; or sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or transgender identity or perceived transgender identity."

"There is no legal definition of hostility so we use the everyday understanding of the word which includes ill-will, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment and dislike."

Just looked this up and wow, if they're working to that the bar seems incredibly low to determine a hate crime!

I will pledge to your legal fund, Sarah. I'm glad you started a new thread about this.
Please everyone read Sarah's blog post
www.faircop.org.uk/fruit-of-the-poison-tree/

As I understand it, the police simply record the complaint as given, and it is recorded as a 'hate incident'. No challenging, no investigation, no questioning to see if the complainant has a grudge or other malevolent reason to make the report. Simply recorded.

And as I said, Scottish Trans Alliance senior members are advising people who come to their Government funded conferences to make such reports when women put stickers up saying women are adult human females. God knows what is advised on all those 'Helplines'

The Stasi did stuff like this. Are we one day going to be allowed to access the files on ourselves after the trans ideology comes tumbling down like the Wall?

Exactly. My understanding is that it's the perception of the viewer that makes it hateful - of course that makes it completely open to abuse because it's basically saying that if I think you're hatefu

Which was always the problem with the McPherson definition. I’m surprised it’s taken this long for the troublemakers to figure it out.

How can you be sure NekoShiro? How can you be sure that you won't get on the wrong side of someone in your personal or professional life and be reported for a hate incident?

It's not just online reporting - it's anything you say or do, or someone perceives you to have said or done.

You might be feeling on the right side of history today and completely clean in thought and deed, but what about tomorrow if the goal posts shift?

Surely there must be some common sense, 'if the average person' would also construe the matter as hateful, over and above just personal perception?

Well tbh I wouldn't be having this issue as I know not to use my real name on anything online, so I'm perfectly happy for police to screenshot my posts under an alias that I use on only this website and will abandon after a couple of year.

Good for you. But, in a free country, people shouldn't have to use an alias or hide their identity when discussing a subject, controversial or not.