As with PSNI & attending Pride in uniform: if you allow officers to support cause X while in uniform; how do you say they cannot support cause Y? For PSNI: Police Service Policy on ‘Off Duty Standards’ and our Code of Ethics, both drawn from our statutory obligations, create clear expectations for all officers and staff in terms of our impartiality and prohibit officers from wearing their uniform or being identifiable as police when engaging in ‘cause issues’. (It’s quite interesting, incidentally, that lots of people who yell about “no police at Pride” were outraged at, er, no police at Pride 🤨 So often one is reminded of a tantrumming toddler, minus any of the sweet or engaging qualities of that demographic.)
It will be interesting to see if this, combined with the push to investigate crime-crime not (literal) non-crimes will bring about change. It would also be very instructive to publish separate statistics for hate crimes & non-crime hate incidents; ideally with the latter grouped as far as possible by general type. Much harder to claim a dizzying rise in transphobic hate crimes if the actual statistics show a dizzying rise in people reporting they saw words (NB said words were not necessarily addressed to them) they disliked online. Particularly against a backdrop of increasing violent crime against holders of other protected characteristics 🤨