Suella Braverman statement about police behaviour and TRA police officer response

[Truthlikeness]

I was heartened to see the letter to policing leaders published by the Home Secretary yesterday, reminding them of the importance of remaining politically neutral. She included reference to the heavy handed tactics used against GC women and their failure to take action against violent TRA threats. She also described the Progress flag as 'symbolising highly contested ideologies'.

Full letter here - https://twitter.com/suellabraverman/status/1697905696145092684?s=46&t=qrlGvkcRV2VhASm_7kkOnw

And the response from a serving police officer - rather neatly illustrating the need for the letter in the first place. I don't see how that can result in anything other than dismissal.

https://twitter.com/wearefaircop/status/1698034987826614582?s=46&t=qrlGvkcRV2VhASm_7kkOnw

MargotBamborough

OK - so we will stop using the Margaret and Samantha scenario, not sure who brought that up!

The damage to the car (if any) of course will be criminal damage in its own right. But if its all linked together - it will also be a crime of harassment, same people involved so it is a course of conduct crime. hence 2 crimes to consider.

Again - it will depend on what the reporting person has said when they contacted the police.

And why this has managed to get past a call taker, a dispatcher etc before being deployed.

And when deployed and investigated it was concluded that no crime has taken place - but both parties needed to be spoken with to establish this. If you just take the account of the reporting person, then it may have been judged as a crime, but having spoken to the older lady that crime can now be negated.

Give all this fantasy what if stuff regarding the woman spoken to and having a non crime hate incident recorded against her a rest @Felix125 it is clear from the reporting and the Police's own fucking words that there was no more to the visit than her act of photographing a sticker.

The police log, which she obtained via a data access request, stated that they had given her 'words of advice . . . regards the harassment and alarm that this sticker could potentially cause to the community'.

West Yorkshire Police said it had recorded the matter as a 'non-crime hate incident', adding: 'Words of advice were given regarding the placing of the sticker, as it was reported to have caused offence.'

The women in question denied placing the sticker there and there is zero evidence that she did do so. She was identified on CCTV taking a photo of it, not placing it.

Note the word potentially not did not part of a protracted harassment against an individual.

So, again, please stop with the fantasy bollocks. From the evidence available it doesn't appear that anyone made a direct complaint, it seems the Police decided off their own bat on viewing the CCTV to act on the hideous crime of photographing a sticker.

That is appalling that the person is still at work.

Furthermore @Felix125 on the basis of Police allocating resources and being (apparently) unable to attend multitudes of actual crimes, deciding when one is reported where in the pile it sits even if there was a phone call about said sticker it should go on the pile of ^to be dealt with sometime within the next millenia, the Police do that regularly with actual crimes such as theft don't they?

In the sticker scenario it is clear the Police have decided she placed that sticker, the lady has denied it and no evidence has been produced to counter her denial.

If any other organisation had spent that amount of time to reduce faith in the police and government as WYP did in this one single case, they would be guilty of multiple counts. But WYP it's just doin the jerb.

at the risk of flogging a dead horse. To Felix:

A consistent sustained and well-known harassment of a woman - police can't work out that it is consistent and sustained because, reasons

One photograph of a sticker? BAM! 3 officers paying a visit.

You literally couldn't make it up.

But what IS the link between the damage to the car and the sticker?

Deliberately damaging someone's car is a crime directed at an identifiable individual (the car owner).

Taking a photo of a sticker is neither a crime nor an act directed at an identifiable individual.

Even if we have CCTV footage proving that the same person keyed a trans person's car AND photographed the sticker... hell, even if we have footage proving that the same person keyed a trans person's car and PLACED the sticker, I do not see how it is reasonable to treat these incidents as linked. Because the placing and the photographing of a sticker in a completely different location to the car has absolutely nothing to do with the car, or its owner.

Even if Margaret knew the car belonged to Samantha and deliberately keyed it because she knows Samantha is trans and she hates trans people, Margaret is completely within her rights to take a photo of any sticker she damn well pleases and this has got absolutely nothing to do with Samantha.

Alternatively, Margaret might fully agree that trans women are women and have only photographed the sticker to show her partner how terribly bigoted people are these days, but have keyed Samantha's car because she had no idea who it belongs to but she is sick and tired of them parking like a twat.

Margot please, please don't. Please. I know you've had a break from here, but lots of us haven't, and we just know you will never ever make a dent.

You're probably right but this nonsense does need calling out all the same.

At what point do the police say, "Look, we can see you are upset by all the stickers and books and people who don't agree with you, but none of these things are crimes and you need to toughen up a bit and stop calling us to intervene in things which are not police matters."

Does that ever happen?

I bet they don't ring the victims of crime who they have done nothing for do they? Or the ones they have just given a crime number for insurance purposes and told them to just get on with it as they have no time to investigate the theft from their home of their property even if said victims have CCTV of the persons involved?

National surveys may well include those who have been arrested or prosecuted but that still doesn't explain this:

YouGov has routinely asked Britons (between 1,627 and 1,820 people at a time) about their confidence in the police to deal with crime in their local area. The first survey for this was in July 2019, when 53 percent said they had “a lot/a fair amount of confidence” whereas in April 2023 this decreased to 39 percent.

I emphasise deal with crime in their local area - do you seriously think that result is skewed by people who have been arrested or prosecuted?

or this:

Surveys conducted by the polling organisation YouGov indicate a loss of public confidence in the police:

• YouGov’s monthly tracker “Are the police doing a good job” shows that over the course of 2020 an average of 70% of respondents thought the police were doing a good job relative to 21% who thought they were doing a bad job. However, by April 2023 these figures were 47% and 44% respectively.

• Similarly, the proportion of people who had not very much confidence or no confidence at all in the police to deal with crime averaged 38% in 2020. As of April 2023, this figure had risen to 53%.

Those are large percentage swings. The Police are rapidly losing the public and as the police are given powers other members of the public do not have as you are policing with the consent of the public that is a serious problem.

The Police are failing to do the job the public want and expect them to do and all the public hear in response are excuses and then watch as the Police faff about speaking to a woman who photographed stickers.

I've just skimmed this thread - many posts obviously there is little point in reading - but I do wonder if Felix gets a kick out of winding up women and particularly out of wasting their precious time and headspace. That's not to say that Felix's disingenuousness shouldn't be called out, or the limits of their arguments noted, but perhaps engaging at length confers too much credibility?

GailBlancheViola
West Yorkshire Police said it had recorded the matter as a 'non-crime hate incident', adding: 'Words of advice were given regarding the placing of the sticker, as it was reported to have caused offence.'

So there was a report made by someone. Not just police reviewing CCTV off their 'own bat'. Most council CCTV is monitored by their staff by the way - not police.

It has been reported to have caused offence. And what else has that reporting person stated...???

Yes - all jobs are graded on threat, harm & risk, so some crimes will be placed on the 'as and when' queue. We don't have the resources to attend all of the jobs straight away.

Crime surveys:
They ring back random victims of crimes - so you get to hear from one and all.

Brefugee
One photograph of a sticker? BAM! 3 officers paying a visit.

And has the reporting person said anything else.....?

MargotBamborough
Harassment is a course of conduct crime - so the individual acts do not need to be linked by a certain crime type.

If I scratch your car on your house driveway, then send 50 postcards to you in the post, then 100 abusive phone calls in the middle of the night. Then suddenly stand outside your place of work (a public place) one day for 3 hours.

You can link all of them together as a course of conduct crime.

The criminal damage to your car and the mall comms relating to the abusive phone calls will be stand-alone crimes in themselves

But you can also link me standing outside your place of work to the harassment.
Even though its a public place and in theory no specific crime has occurred - I have a right to stand there. It can however be linked to the harassment.

Mmmnotsure
Its a discussion forum and its up to people if they want to post or not.
So long as you stick to the rules of the forum, anyone can post.

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1997/40/section/1

(2)For the purposes of this section [F2or section 2A(2)(c)], the person whose course of conduct is in question ought to know that it amounts to [F3 or involves] harassment of another if a reasonable person in possession of the same information would think the course of conduct amounted to harassment of the other.

Given that no reasonable person on the planet would think that taking a photograph of a sticker in a public place is a course of conduct amounting to the harassment of a person who, unbeknown to them, might be spying on them, I think it's crystal clear that the offence of harassment is not made out here, and the investigating officer should have made that clear to the complainer, ideally using the words "no reasonable person on the planet".

I would also love to see a test case to see how far that exemption at the bottom about conduct in the course of preventing crime actually protects the police.

So if the police pay another visit to the sticker lady, this time to quiz her about what feminist books she owns, or why she follows JK Rowling on Twitter, given that none of those things are crimes and the police officer might, by your own admission, only be paying her a visit to make the person who complained about her feel that "something is being done" rather than as a genuine attempt to prevent crime, could the police then be guilty of harassment or is that a literal get out of jail free card in the legislation?

Can you explain what a non hate crime incident is and why the police are devoting resources to them when they don't have enough resources to deal with all the actual crimes that are being committed?

So it caused offence.

OK.

Who cares?

If I start calling the police every time I am offended by a trans activist, are you going to log that as a "non hate crime incident" and send someone out to have a word with them?

Or are you going to tell me to piss off and stop wasting your time?

I'm offended by the huge amount of scrolling I have to do due to repetitive and boring felixplaning

I won't involve the police just yet

Has anyone seen that clip of Germaine Greer on this subject?

She's just like, "OK so you're offended? So what? Who cares? I don't. Try being an old woman."

I keep seeing this thread come up and wondering if there’s an update but nope

just pages of nonsense

I really can’t recommend the griseo petram (grey rock) highly enough

BernardBlacksMolluscs
I keep seeing this thread come up and wondering if there’s an update but nope
just pages of nonsense

That's not a very nice thing to say about MargotBamborough. They are making legitimate points which add to the discussion. As opposed to making references to 'grey rocks'

Now you're just offensive. We see you.

MargotBamborough
For harassment, its not just the one individual act that has to be an offence, but if its part of a course of conduct.

So if I stand outside your place of work which is a public place. Nobody on the planet would believe that this is causing you any harassment. However, if you stated that this is part of the ongoing course of conduct and that I was doing it deliberately to cause you harassment, alarm and distress - would you be happy for the police just to dismiss it?

I am spoken to and state that I was not intending to cause you harassment by standing there and i was just passing the time of day? And of course I would say that because I don't want to admit that I was doing it to cause your harassment.

If its dismissed as not being harassment - therefore I can stand outside your place of work every day from now on then. Would you be happy with that, if you have stated to police that I have been causing your life to be a living hell recently?

Believe me, I have had loads of successful prosecutions for harassment over things which seem trivial and the public would not view as a problem: sending birthday cards, flowers, walking past the school at pick up times, saying 'hello' as they walk past in the street etc etc.

But when you link it as part of the on going harassment, these minor 'incidents' become very relevant. And often perpetrators of harassment are doing these 'minor' things to tell their victims 'I'm still here!'

A non crime hate incident - is just that. An incident which is not a crime. We have many incidents which we deal with which are not crimes - RTC's, sudden deaths, missing from homes, suicidal people, mental health breakdowns, child protection etc etc. All of these jobs will be closed as a non crime incident.

If the incident has an element of hate towards an individual or individual group - then it will be closed as non crime hate incident.

For example - police get called to a disturbance and it centres around an argument on the street concerning one individual who expresses resentment or a dislike to people following a particular faith. No offences have been disclosed, but it will be recorded as a non crime hate incident.