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

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 hateful (or even if I want other people to think you're hateful for my own ends, because who is to judge what is a truly held perception or not), anything you say can be perceived at hateful by me.

If I perceive NekoShiro as hateful, then anything she says, no matter how innocuous to another observer may be hateful. If I perceive her post above as a dog whistle then it's a dog whistle and hateful. And I can report her as such to my local plod.

If Sturgeon gets her Hate bill through in Scotland you could get 7 years for that.

Out of interest why does it matter if the reporting is maliciously motivated or not?

A person could be maliciously motivated to report their neighbour's theft of a 3rd party's car because of a prior dispute between the two. It doesn't matter at all, surely? The only relevance is whether or not the theft occurred, as far as the police are concerned.

Anyone could have hate incidents recorded against them, anonymous or not, and they wouldn’t know it. That an anonymous person wouldn’t be affected but a named person would is immaterial.

JK Rowling could have hate incidents recorded against her and would have no idea.

And I'm not saying I don't support you, do whatever you need to do, I'm just here on a public forum trying to expand my mind through talking to women who are more experienced in life and I want to keep growing and being questioned and told I'm wrong so that I can learn things I wouldn't learn otherwise.

To understand why it’s so shocking, I think you need to forget the internet aspect temporarily, and think about what the role and function of the police is, how police forces have been politically misused under various jurisdictions and what the relationship between police and state should be.

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 years.

It's naive not to use an alias, I grew up with adults telling me to be careful about what identifying things I post online and it's a lil strange to me that people now happily post everything linked to their names, faces, place of work etc beyond what would go onto a cv as malicious things like police reports, stalking and swatting are so frequent now.

And I'm not saying I don't support you, do whatever you need to do, I'm just here on a public forum trying to expand my mind through talking to women who are more experienced in life and I want to keep growing and being questioned and told I'm wrong so that I can learn things I wouldn't learn otherwise.

What did you post OP? It's hard to comment on police actions without knowing the content. Was any of the material directed at a personal level against someone?

Arrietty - its the same core group of people who have now joined forces with various TRAs - and I am sad to say, some self identifying feminists.

That’s quite revealing about everyone involved, then. I’m genuinely shocked by that.

Good luck with it.

The problem is with the definition of a "hate incident". Unless the current definition is changed, absolutely anything can be a hate incident and has to be recorded (according to the police).

So if I post on twitter, or even say, that I don't like someone, a person overhearing it can decide to be offended and report me. Because they perceive it to be hateful it is, no proof necessary.

The guidelines need to be changed.

This is terrible, sending you my full support and thanks x

Have you tried pointing out to them that, since they accept this is false, the issue of malice is irrelevant on the basis of their own wording of the relevant rules?

Shocking. Truly shocking. Not to mention racist. They’ve taken something that was set up with the good intentions of giving black people the opportunity to have the racism towards them recorded after the murder of Stephen Lawrence and disregarded the importance of that, instead using this process to vexatiously complain about women talking about women’s rights.

Maybe it’s worth asking Baroness Lawrence if she’s aware of what this process is being misused for.

This is outrageous. 1984. I hope you get this fixed. I agree that you want it very public.

The hate incidents recording by the police is a shambles.

There doesn't need to be any crime, just a perception, no evidence no investigation by the police, the accused often isn't informed despite this being recorded, and the accused is given no option to challenge, save for very expensive Jr's.

So much for innocent until proven guilty. Everyone should be concerned about this.

And it's gamed, to harass individuals and to inflate the numbers of hate incidents on records.

I saw your twitter posts on this and other things.

Is there anything else to be done?

I would never have known if it hadn't been for my idiot harassers boasting about what they did.

Wait. Are these the same two people who’ve been harassing you all along? Including the politician who doxxed you on here years ago?

This is nightmarish. And terribly wrong. If there is spadework needed later let us know. (I hope I did that bit right..)

I don't understand the police's assertion that they won't remove these records on this basis:

The grounds of False/malicious allegation cited are not met. No additional verifiable evidence has been presented that categorically supports your claims that the report was made out of malice, and early deletion of this record is not considered to be in the public interest at this stage.

They seem to have focussed solely on the issue of malice, but that sentence implies that they must also remove allegations that are false - it's not that they have to be false AND malicious, they have to be false OR malicious. Whether they think malice is demonstrated or not, they seem to have acknowledged that this is a false report because there is nothing in what has been reported that could be construed as a hate crime. They don't seem to understand their own rules.

Terrifying.

We background check all prospective employees. (If something flags it goes to the head of HR only and the hire is able to discuss it at least) I presume it would flag if it was on your record? Would this also flag on any Working with children checks?