Full piece here
www.thestranger.com/slog/2018/12/20/37275129/fighting-on-twitter-in-the-uk-you-could-be-arrested-for-that
Norwich police went from "harassment is subjective" to "nothing to do with us, we were just the messenger" and gave me the address of an officer in Northumbria, who is studiously ignoring the following email I sent.
Dear X
I write in relation to the visit on 9th December 2018 date by an Officer from my local Police Force. They informed me that a Dr Adrian Harrop had made a complaint against me relating to the following tweets.
twitter.com/Glinner/status/1071501508427042816
twitter.com/Glinner/status/1071506718268502017
I am advised by the Norfolk Constabulary that they were acting as messengers in this case. They have given me your email address as those responsible for contacting the Norfolk Constabulary and requesting that an Officer was ‘tasked to come and see you to give you words of advice about some Twitter comments you had made’.
The Officer at Norfolk Constabulary, Joanne Minnis, told me that: ‘the decision to give you words was made by the Police Force which dealt with the victim’s concerns. Norfolk Police were simply the messengers’.
I have reviewed the tweets I sent carefully and write to you as I am bewildered that a Police Force could review those matters and seriously consider them to be harassment in any form. Dr Adrian Harrop is a prominent trans rights activist, as he states in his Twitter profile. He is a person who exhibits considerable unpleasantness online in particular to women. He has on several occasions engaged in behaviour which by any reckoning is far more targeted and harassing than anything I have said.
I keep reading reports of how Police Forces are underfunded and overworked and lack ability to investigate burglaries or robberies. I am astonished, therefore, that your Police Force thought it necessary or proportionate to contact Norfolk Constabulary and ask them to visit me.
I, therefore, write to ask you to explain, in advance of me making any formal complaint, what precise offences are alleged against me, what evidence your Police Force considered, and what about the tweets I sent could possibly be seen as in objective way harassment? I ask you, in particular, to note that the comments referred to Dr Adrian Harrop’s interview on Sky News. This was self-evidently a public broadcast upon which I commented.
I have been the target of a number of actions from trans rights activists owing to my declared belief that sex is an immutable characteristic and that the blurring of gender and sex can present difficulties and even dangers to women. However, the recent use of the Police as the trans rights activist enforcers is alarming. I therefore request, urgently, an explanation of why my support of the protected characteristic of sex within the meaning of the Equality Act 2010, and my freedom of speech, are being subject to curtailment by such trans rights activists with the cooperation of the Police.
Thanks in advance for your response.
Graham Linehan
By the way, the Norwich police are dead wrong that harassment is subjective. There is a test, and the police should know it:
"there must be evidence to prove the conduct was targeted at an individual, was calculated to alarm or cause him/her distress, and was oppressive and unreasonable."