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

[Spero]

Dear All

I am posting here in case I 'disappear' from Twitter. I set out the background here if you want to read more.
twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/1289109245280100353?s=20

In a nutshell I made a Subject Access Request of Wiltshire police after a Twitter account boasted I now had a 'record for life' of my 'hate'. The police disclosed to me 12 pages of screenshots that were not hateful in the least; they were mainly discussions about the GC debate that have been confirmed as protected political speech.

I have requested this is deleted; the Information Management Team at Wiltshire have declined so I will go through their appeal process, eventually to the PCC and then judicial review.

I am writing to urge ANYONE who publishes on line about gender ID etc in their own name or is otherwise readily identifiable, to make a SAR of you own force to see what is recorded against you; you will not be told.

If there are others in the same position as me it might be sensible to consider joining forces in some kind of class action.

hopefully I will know by the autumn if I am going for JR.

[BoreOfWhabylon]

You throw out unsubstantiated allegations, personally attack Spero and I'm the one table-thumping?

You've made your point all right, but I don't think it's the one you think it is.

Muting you now.

[CatandtheFiddle]

Good Lord @Spero that is scary - George Orwell was a journalist of the future - 1984 was about 1948 Stalinist Russia ... and clearly TRA-hypnotised UK in 2020.

Good luck!

Your Twitter feed is ace - balanced & informative.

[JellyFishSquish]

The police are clearly busy with lots of recordings of perceived hate that are not actually hate, yet rape is essentially decriminalised. Ok.

[ChattyLion]

Spero wishing you all the best with this. Thanks for pursuing this on behalf of women.

Maybe this whole area can be something for the Law commission to think about when they look at hate crime and the protected characteristic of sex? And the knock on effects around hate crime..

www.lawcom.gov.uk/project/hate-crime/

[VaggieMight]

The police are clearly busy with lots of recordings of perceived hate that are not actually hate, yet rape is essentially decriminalised. Ok.

Yes, and attacks on women, because of their biological sex, are not even classed as hate crimes.

[BatShite]

People wonder why many women are anon online. Besided the multitude of threats levelled at you for daring to believe in sex, the doxxing, the harassment, there is this kind of nonsense threat also.

'Hate incidents' guidance seems ridiculous, especially if theres no way to actually fight it and its totally based on 'perception'. I could in theory take huge offense to someone saying they are eating a banana, as I am allergic, and report that they knew bananas are dangerous to me and said it specifically to upset me and its caused me stess..etc. And they would have this marked as a hate incident? (I know a protected characteristic needs to be invilved though, though oddly, not including sex..again, but..theoretically)

I understand the need for hate crimes guidance. I am kind of..50/50 on it mind, especially given, again sex is not included. But this hate incident nonsense? Just..playground shite seemingly.

[DazedWifelet]

@ArriettyJones No, DBS looks at PNC data only not a forces's own systems. PNC is a fact based system that can be used for evidential purposes in court.

[ArriettyJones]

[quote DazedWifelet]@ArriettyJones No, DBS looks at PNC data only not a forces's own systems. PNC is a fact based system that can be used for evidential purposes in court.[/quote]
So where does the non-conviction information on an enhanced DBS come from? The whole system was inspired by Huntley, who had no convictions before Soham. Where is the “soft” intelligence held?

[ArriettyJones]

I can’t believe I never thought specifically about where this data was held before. It’s potentially a kind of police-originated libel and is quite probably being held in multiple databases.

[DazedWifelet]

@ArriettyJones Enhanced DBS combines data from
PNC and PND (Police National Database) which came about after the Soham Murders enquiry. PND is a central store for intelligence gathered by forces. There is current programme at the Home Office to combine the two datasets into one, clearly referenced to distinguish evidential data from intelligence data.

[ArriettyJones]

Oh so it’s the PND that holds non-conviction data? Thanks, I was never aware of that distinction.

This “hate incident” business does make one wonder about the integrity and reliability of all non-conviction police records. I wonder if anyone is actively worried about it?

[Silencia]

So potentially, someone who was the victim of domestic abuse could have their email/social media accounts hacked (happened to me, can't prove who did it. Didn't discover the breech till 6+ months later, strangely coinciding with the anniversary of my PTSD trauma) ...

and then those accounts could be used to post hate speech, then reported by the abuser or their friends before deleting it. And the account owner would never know until somewhere down the line when they lost the job/opportunity/were considered an unfit parent in court/it was used to support the abuser's narrative of events/suddenly everyone hated them. And even then they would have basically no recourse to correct this information. (I really hope this didn't occur to my hacker, but meanwhile the domestic abuse flags on our address didn't stop my Ex getting an enhanced disclosure to volunteer with very vulnerable people, and at least some people I considered friends definitely seem to think I am all sorts of horrible things now for no reason I am aware of.)

Good luck Sarah - I really hope I am misunderstanding this one. :/

[SetYourselfOnFire]

@Apollo440

This is absolutely deliberate and part of the TRA campaign strategy to increase the recorded hate incidents. These are now regularly quoted back (unquestioned) in media communications.

Bang on. All of their stats are faked like this. This scheme is more elaborate and nasty. (Sue them Sarah!) Usually they just lie, the media repeats endlessly anyway. When you try telling this to people they don't believe it. It sounds mad.

[Spero]

This thread has highlighted the problem. I see 2 people have commented to make allegations about me - I don't know what they are as the posts have now been deleted, but if anyone wants to tell me, I will answer them.

I suspect they may be from women who claim I am a Mens Rights Activist because I do not agree with allegations of violence being accepted as fact on a person's assertion alone. They never seem to notice that I have also been blocked and threatened by Fathers 4 Justice for pointing out that violent men don't make good fathers.

So I wonder what would happen if the police got complaints about me from both sides - one saying I was 'hateful' to men, the other 'hateful' to women, because my stance is that the rule of law must be respected and once found to be violent men cannot claim automatic access to children?

How would they manage that I wonder?

I will never forget a teacher I cross examined about sexual abuse. 2 children had given very different accounts of the same scenario. She said she 'believed' the children.

I said - which one? They both cannot be right.

She said 'I believe both of them'.

I hope what she meant was this: 'I believe that both children were telling me something important about what they perceive happened to them but I take your point that we have to be careful how far we rely on these accounts because they are very different but supposed to be describing the same incident'.

But given the quality of her evidence I don't think she did. I think she had been trained to literally 'believe' that 2 contrasting accounts were true at the same time, simply because the children asserted abuse.

I wonder if it is exactly this idiocy which also now infects the police.

[DialSquare]

*Spero
*
I saw the post and cutting out the language etc. It basically accused you of not supporting abused children but supporting the abusers. It was a nasty personal attack.

[MoleSmokes]

There are so many devil-in-the-details issues raised in this thread that had not occurred to me before. For example, the lack of requirement for any investigation makes it completely plausible, in fact inevitable, that the real "Susan Jones from Coventry" would have a "record" and not even know about it:

bishopgiggles - "Re: using real names/aliases online, is there any requirement when reporting a hate incident to have any kind of proof that the person posting it is the person being reported? If i went online as Susan Jones from Coventry and posted something racist, would another real Susan Jones from Coventry get it put on her police record?"

Where this affects employment opportunities, the impact sounds very similar to police collusion with the illegal Blacklisting of construction workers, trade unionists and allegedly "subversive" civil servants:

newint.org/features/2019/03/07/union-blacklisting-and-police-infiltration-ten-years

The difference is that this time the process has been legitimised and follows official guidance from the College of Policing.

Which leads on to another Stasi-like aspect that has not (I think) been mentioned so far in this thread, ie. that the Police do not need to receive a report from a third party in order to record a "non-crime hate crime" aka "hate incident".

A Police Officer is entitled to take the initiative to record a "hate incident", on the basis that he/she believes that something said or done might be perceived by another person as "hateful" and "offensive".

IIRC Oxford Police decided off their own bat that "Women don't have penises" stickers were "hate incidents", logging one "incident" per sticker discovered. They asked for help from the public in identifying who was posting the stickers, so that these "hate incidents" did not remain anonymous.

The other side of the coin, already mentioned by PP, is that unquestioning recording of "non-crime hate crime incidents", whether attributable or anonymous, has implications for "hate incident" statistics:

ThePurported - "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.'"

Or beeping your car horn at someone with a protected characteristic:

"Elderly woman questioned by police as hate criminal after ‘beeping car horn at black driver’"
Hate crime rules forced police to quiz the pensioner after she beeped at a driver who was "taking ages" at a petrol station

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/elderly-woman-questioned-police-hate-13535704

Several police forces also record hate crimes against people who present as members of "alternative subcultures", eg. goths, punks, metal-heads:

www.policeprofessional.com/news/force-highlights-subculture-hate-crime/

This arose from the murder of Sophie Lancaster who was targeted because she was a goth. I do not know if this includes recording "non-crime hate crime incidents" but, logically, it should.

This all comes from a good place and with the best of intentions but, where the "hate incident" system is concerned, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Spero - until you explained what had happened with you I had assumed that anyone reported would be contacted by the Police. The fact that the Police do not routinely do this gives the lie to this being a system to prevent "escalation" from "hate incidents" to hate crimes.

Without any action other than recording allegations as facts this does not seem to be anything other than a way of blacklisting people. It's worse than McCarthyism.

[Spero]

@DialSquare

*Spero
*
I saw the post and cutting out the language etc. It basically accused you of not supporting abused children but supporting the abusers. It was a nasty personal attack.

I have no doubt that arises out of my frequent public comments on women such as Victoria Haigh and Samantha Baldwin who have been found after lengthy fact findings to have caused their children very serious harm. Both women now assert they are 'victims' of the evil, secret Family Courts etc etc.

I wonder how the police would balance their assertions against a court judgment? It gets very interesting this, doesn't it.

[Spero]

"Spero - until you explained what had happened with you I had assumed that anyone reported would be contacted by the Police. The fact that the Police do not routinely do this gives the lie to this being a system to prevent "escalation" from "hate incidents" to hate crimes.

Without any action other than recording allegations as facts this does not seem to be anything other than a way of blacklisting people. It's worse than McCarthyism."

Exactly. I am no 'free speech absolutist'. I accept that in order for society to function we have to have rules and boundaries about what it is acceptable to say to others - words can be very hurtful and put someone in fear of imminent attack etc.

but the police and criminal justice system should be VERY SLOW to entertain complaints against expression of opinion on the basis that someone finds them hurtful and nothing more. And if they are going to entertain such complaints and determine the maker 'hateful' then it is simply natural justice to allow a right of reply from the person accused.

[DialSquare]

Very interesting indeed Spero.
As JackiesArmy said to the accuse "f you have evidence of the contrary (even one instance) I would love to see it. If you don't post any actual facts, then I'll continue to believe that you are taking this personally, which (in my experience) is often interesting"

[BaronEssoStation]

Where is this stuff held? The police force where you live or the police force where the person who reported you lives?

[DialSquare]

accuser*

[Spero]

@BaronEssoStation

Where is this stuff held? The police force where you live or the police force where the person who reported you lives?

I assume it's held by Wiltshire and there will be some marker for other forces to contact them if anyone complains to another force, otherwise what's the point?

Part of my complaint/eventual JR is the lack of transparency about where this data is held, who has access to it and to whom it will be disclosed.

[Spero]

Update - just to let you know I have apparently been reported again, this time by an aspiring Lib Dem politician for saying 'only women have a cervix'.

I will SAR Wiltshire again in 3 months to check the state of play and hope these types of complaints will help in any legal action.

[lionheart]

I hop you can take legal action. This is absurd.

[boatyardblues]

@Spero

Update - just to let you know I have apparently been reported again, this time by an aspiring Lib Dem politician for saying 'only women have a cervix'.

I will SAR Wiltshire again in 3 months to check the state of play and hope these types of complaints will help in any legal action.

That’s nuts! Is scientific, biological fact now hate speech? Harry’s appeal can’t be heard too soon.