Public Order Offence for saying words deemed offensive?

[NancyDrawed]

I am not familiar with the complexities of law and the spoken word, but I do remember Justice Julian Knowles saying that we don't have the right to be offended in one of the Harry Miller cases regarding Non Crime Hate Incidents. So if police forces can no longer use NCHIs to stifle freedom of speech / belief / opinion it appears that Public Order Offence is something else they are going to try to use.

I cannot believe that the Police have called this vulnerable woman in for an interview - twitter thread below

https://twitter.com/BretteDutton/status/1655361519830401024

If these work the way I think they are supposed to, they make make sense when used properly. Someone going out in a public place, shouting crude things and causing a ruckus that makes the space largely unusable for others, being an example.

But you always need a robust sense among the police (and others) about what that kind of inappropriate public behaviour does and does not include. And really with other laws too, so much of how they are understood comes down to social norms.

If, as some argue, we no longer educate kids to grow up to be democratic citizens, then I guess it's to be expected that our public institutions become undemocratic too.

Derbyshire, apparently.

The Police & Crime Commissioner is Angelique Foster (Con)

https://www.derbyshire-pcc.gov.uk/help-support/contact-us/

You are putting a lot of faith in what the patient said she said. Hardly the most objective of people

This must be placed into the hands of a solicitor. Apart from the fact they you are allowed to offend people, this took place in a psychiatric ward so that raises questions of mental capacity at the time. At minimum this lady should surely be considered a vulnerable person and be provided with an appropriated adult (who should make sure she has a solicitor). I am not even sure if the police can insist on mandatory interviews without arresting someone.

This is in the US OP

Surely it was Derbyshire, UK (going on the address in the letter…)

This Brette Dutton, in the US

is posting about her UK friend

and her UK friend whilst in a psychiatric hospital said she didn’t do something that has been reported to police

a) the police have a duty to make enquiries
b) your source is not exactly… concrete

Brette Dutton is in the US posting on behalf of her Uk friend

You mean the patient who made the complaint? The one apparently shouting that JKR was evil?

There is too much opacity developing in 'police procedures' around alleged wrong-think and its 'investigation'.

The PCCs need to be on top of this. They represent the public and are there to hold the Chief Constables to account on behalf on their county constituents - all of them.

What arrangements have the police made to assess their fitness to be interviewed? Any?

I struggle to imagine very much at all a person undergoing psychiatric care in hospital could say that would merit police intervention. Clearly such people are likely to be more inclined than the rest of the population to say not very nice things, and being spoken to by the police is unlikely to be of much benefit to their longer term mental health.

on unheaded letter 🤔

Oh and the email address isn’t in the format for the Derbyshire police

[email protected]

The letter has the Derbyshire Constabulary logo and details at the bottom. You seem very keen to dismiss it, let's see what other information comes out.

The lack of name did strike me as odd, too, but I have received mail in a windowed envelope before where the name of the intended recipient is beyond the window view although the address is visible.

That said, I would probably make an effort to uncover the name rather than open the letter, but I'm not her partner. I can understand him wanting to try to sort it out himself without her having to be involved given her recent hospital stay

Sorry

[email protected]

Come on

lack of name on envelope (and yet addressed to a name?)

on unheaded paper

to a non existent email address

‘Unheeded paper’

What do we know

a US friend has posted about her friends version of what happened in a UK psychiatric unit - and claimed the police are wrong.

Forgive me if my knee jerk reaction is to trust the police more than the friend

Forgive me if my knee jerk reaction is to trust the police more than the friend

The Police are hardly proving themselves to be very trustworthy at the moment.

If this is true its appalling, patients on a psych ward should not be held legally responsible for the things they say, when they are there otherwise we are criminalising insanity, amoungst other things

That said I've had to email police officers a lot (work related) and the email address is not in the format I would expect either

We don’t know what was said between two inpatients in a secure psychiatric facilities. But we do know that people are not in secure psychiatric facilities because they are of sound mind. We also know people in such places are acutely ill - you don’t get an inpatient mental health bed because you feel a bit down. And they are likely to be very mentally vulnerable still when they are discharged. You can’t take the word of either party here and even if you could it would not be relevant due to mental health status at the time.

IDK - I agree there are some oddities, but it's a stupid fake, if it is a fake, because so much verifiable info is included.