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

Stupid fake…. All over Twitter

We can see you would like it to be. But if it is fake, then who sent it?

Many people in psychiatric facilities do have capacity. For example, someone may be suffering from severe depression with strong suicidal ideation, so detained under the Mental Health Act for her own protection, but she might well still have legal capacity to make other decisions. And the threshold to be considered not responsible for any criminal actions (not that I think this woman, if real, has committed a crime) is high.

I wonder why Derbyshire police's 'contact us' page is in Welsh? 🤔

Denbighsire or Debyshire?

Scrap that we have NW police not denbighsire so that's irrelevant

It was definitely Derbyshire. But I logged out and went back in and it was in English this time. I don't know how that happened but Welsh speakers are well catered for if they have a problem in Derbyshire! 😄

It's dated 2 weeks ago. Surely she'd have rung and checked out its legitimacy by now?

😂

if it’s “fake” it doesn’t need to have been “sent” to anyone

'We believe her' - except when we don't like what she's saying.

i don’t “believe” anyone simply on the grounds of their gender and a pithy expression

MNHQ actually has Talk Guidelines around this. They ran a whole campaign a few years ago.

And it would have applied to a US Twitter account talking about her friend?

😂

Whataninsight as you as so determined that, despite it representing a pattern of behaviour by the police, it must be fake - I assume you would be outraged should it be found to be true? And that you agree that saying you can’t change sex is not criminal even if the other party is very offended by that?

I saw this posted in a FB group by the woman who has been supposedly sent that letter, I had a quick look at her FB profile as she is fairly local to me and for what it’s worth it looks like a genuine profile. I’ve no idea if the letter or post is genuine though.

It’s procedure, if an allegation is made, the police want to interview everyone involved so they do not make any decisions based on one person’s version of events. It’s quite possible the person making the allegation heard or thought they heard something different. It is also possible it wasn’t the “non-binary” person in the scenario who filed the report, it could have been a witness.

It’s procedure, if an allegation is made, the police want to interview everyone involved so they do not make any decisions based on one person’s version of events

It’s not procedure to compel people to attend an interview where there is no alleged offence.

What is the alleged offence here (assuming the facts are as presented)? There is no such thing as a stand alone hate crime in E&W. A so-called hate crime can only occur as an aggravating factor of another offence. What is it?

By her own admission, she told someone to "Go and get raped".

I don't know about everyone else but I'd deem that pretty damn offensive and likely to cause distress.

There is an alleged offence! The letter states You are alleged to have performed a public order offence…

So what’s the alleged crime? The Public Order Act 1986 wouldn’t apply.

You’re assuming what the accused is correct in her speculation that the allegation is only about that one thing she said that she recalls might have been offensive. But the accused has no idea what she is alleged to have done because she hasn’t gone in to do an interview with the police yet. The allegation could be of something completely different.

Yes it could.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64

See Section 5 - Harassment, alarm, or distress. Telling someone to "go and get raped" could very well fall within this section.

I meant because the alleged offender was in her living accommodation and dwellings (broadly defined) are excluded.

Yes, whether the unit would be classed as a dwelling or not I don't know. Regardless, telling someone to "go and get raped" is extremely unpleasant to say the least and is worthwhile looking at to determine if an offence under the POA has been committed, which is the purpose of that letter.

Psychiatric hospitals are dwellings with living accommodations?