Another waste of police resources

[Hoardasurass]

Police hunt vandal who sprayed paint over Pride flags outside station https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13656081/Police-vandal-paint-pride-flags-east-London-station.html?ito=native_share_article-nativemenubutton
So the police don't have the funds or officers to deal with shoplifting or normal cases of vandalism but for this they can get forensics out and do door to door enquiries.
The comments are really quite good

Only read a few comments but this is close to how I feel.

Surely, painting flags on the public highway was the initial point of vandalism

That's a pride flag?

I know 😂

I suppose he could say he was re-colouring in the pink as it was a bit faded and it looked the right shade of pink in the shop. Not sure how he could explain colouring outside the lines though. Wonky brush? Ex council line painter? The mask kept slipping up over his eyes?

Sound a bit testerical

Detective Inspector James Rush from the North East Public Protection Unit, who is leading efforts to identify the offender, appealed to the public for information.
'We stand with the local LGBTQ+ community and will not tolerate these disgusting, inexcusable hate crimes in Forest Gate,' he said.

The flag looks quite worn anyway. The Council will probably now waste money on repainting them.

Why is an INSPECTOR on the case though? Surely a constable is capable of this, leaving an experienced officer to deal with more serious crimes like stabbings, stalking, rapes, sexual assaults, rampant shoplifting gangs, or do those hardly exist where he is based 🤔

But there's nothing more important than a transphobic hate crime remember

Statistically the police are far more likely to prosecute a woman for committing a thought crime than they are to prosecute a rapist

So, remind me again how long it took the cops to get there when a local shop was broken into?
36 hours.
By the time Plod deigned to put in an appearance, the shopkeeper had cleaned up and reopened as she couldn't afford to lose another day's business. I don't suppose that made it terribly easy to dust for prints.

But overpainting a flag!!!

And our political class wonders why so many people despise them, and why turnout is so low at election time.

Door to door enquiries, forensics, trawling CCTV

"disgusting, inexcusable hate crimes". You would think reading those words that something very bad indeed had happened. Or maybe not.

So someone did a political graffiti (of a flag), and then someone else did a political graffiti (just plain red) on top of the original political graffiti? And the police are on a frenzied hunt for the second person?

What a mountain out of a molehill. Either political graffiti is allowed or it isn't. The second person's graffiti wasn't offensive in of itself, it just covered over the first one.

I wonder how many burglaries have been sidelined whilst they investigate a Dulux hate crime?

Caron Harrison, co-founder of Forest Gayte Pride, said the local LGBT+ community was 'appalled', but 'they cannot paint over our pride'.

All that's happened is someone painted over your graffiti! That happens to graffiti all the time. Any street artist knows that.

That's not a Pride flag. That's a trans flag.

Always strikes me as odd that people paint their flag on the ground and want others to walk on it. Putting someone's flag on the ground and trampling it is phenomenally disrespectful! Something else this ideology is queering, I suppose.

I don't see what crime the red paint person has committed.

The DM article only shows an image of the trans flag being vandalised, but the pride and progress flags were also targeted. Multiple times, hence police investigations taking police.

www.thepinknews.com/2024/07/19/forest-gate-pride-flags-vandalism-lgbtq-london/

No Inspector does the investigation. Ever. They manage other people doing the work, but they are not out taking statements, doing door to door or reviewing CCTV for example.

Constables (and the newish civilian investigators) do 99% of the actual work in the Police. Uniformed Sgts to be fair to them will try to be out working with their teams on patrol etc, but they don't carry workloads of investigations.

The odd DS may do interviews, but they'll usually be managing the interviews done by the constables. In some specialist units they will be leading the charge much more regularly but Inspectors are still not usually out with the team on jobs unless they need oversight on the ground.

As a DC I was certainly investigating murders, rapes, etc - the more senior you are, the more management heavy your role is. There are specific exceptions to this such as the Superintendents involved in sneaky beaky work.

Don't be ridiculous! Rape and knife crime more important than misgendering???!!!

And that is a real fucking travesty😡

Hadalifeonce · Today 21:40

I wonder how many burglaries have been sidelined whilst they investigate a Dulux hate crime?

Dulux hate crime !!

😂

I get what you are saying (and already knew that ty) but he is leading the investigation. That means a minimum of two people will be on this. Him and someone. That is an awful lot of waste of experience and wages and effort for graffiti when there is so much worse happening in that area that should be his focus and priority.

I guess it's the usual story of them wanting easy "wins" because anything else is too hard.

Wot I reckon is the 'vandal' is actually an ally. Bravely drawing attention to the parlous state of the flags by figuratively covering them in blood. Should be given a medal 🏅 in my opinion.

Not the most ridiculous thing I've heard stated as apparent fact by, so called, clever people. Probably wouldn't even make the top ten.

Ahhh 4D chess (taps forehead knowingly). Paint over your own pride flag to get it noticed by the Mail!

There seem to have been several cases where police horses and guide dogs have been confused by multicoloured painted roads and pavements such as rainbow and/or trans flags on zebra crossings. Guide dogs haven't been trained to recognise the different markings and police horses have been spooked. eg. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10181979/Camden-trans-walkway-New-zebra-crossing-causes-chaos-guide-dog-police-horse.html.

The obvious thing would be to ban all rainbow/trans flags, and similar, painted on the public highway for whatever reason: decoration, celebration, protest or virtue signalling, and clean them all up.

Someone should remind him that that pink, white and blue flag has nothing to do with LGB. It's all about the T, an entirely homophobic concept.

ETA I see from later posts other flags were painted too - but in all honesty they are all about the T, too, these days.

What, exactly, is the hate crime here?