Met Police will no longer investigate Non Crime Hate Incidents

[Ellerby]

This is very breaking. Evan Davies just said it on R4 news. Will try and get a link.

Bloody brilliant!!!

Suppose someone complained to the police that you had done one of those things. The police would record it but you wouldn't know that, and the police would not investigate, so you would have no chance of challenging the allegation and asking what evidence there was.

I would expect to be made aware of the nchi that you speak of with the chance to appeal

But otherwise, I would fully think that such a thing is acceptable

You cant just go around being bigoted online and expect no recumpense

People should be notified and given the chance to appeal but this is a travesty that bigotry will just now go unpunished

So then being bigoted online is still a crime? I'm confused honestly

How terrifying, in this day and age, the thought of being the victim of a racist assault via tweet or by someone driving by, and for there to be the possibility of there being no legal consequence 🥺😪

The things you describe are already crimes; they come under public order offences like harassment with the intention to cause distress. These can also attract heavier punishment if racism (for example) is found to be a motivating factor, as they are then treated as hate crimes.

I can see where you are coming from, but ultimately I think we have to stick quite strictly to the line that we shouldn't be criminalising people for what they think (or saying what they think), even if we find that hateful. I would agree with you that racism is obviously hateful, but there are different perspectives. What one person might consider racism, someone else might consider a reasonable comment on the impact of immigration.

Having just come out from a period of "no debate" where a woman saying that she didn't consider men identifying as women to be actual women and wasn't happy to share a changing room with a man on that basis was treated as heinous bigotry and shouted down in a furious pile on I think it is important that we can have conversations that some people might find uncomfortable without criminalising anyone. Ultimately, I would rather know what someone thinks. If I find that reprehensible, I just won't associate or support them.

I blame Tony Blair for this, on general principle, because he's the guy who brought in Asbos, and thereby introduced a system of incentives where PC Plod will be classed as more high performing if he hands out lots of fixed penalty notices than if he spends his day investigating actual crimes.

Apart from which, giving the police the power to put a black mark against your name for wrongthink is a very bad idea. That's the kind of thing they do in China's social credit system, where you might suddenly find it difficult to get a job if you've been overheard deviating from Chairman Xi Thought.

No. The thoughts in my head are my own, and it's no business of Sir Mark Rowley whether some of my opinions are a bit spicy. Sir Mark's job is to investigate crime. That's what we pay him for.

People are entitled to hold all sorts of ghastly views as long as they don’t act on them. The whole gender identity debacle has shown me that - difficult as might be to accept

I don't want to derail onto public choice economics, but incentives matter. Let's say that we have a Wi Spa type incident in London. Under the current system, which is more likely:

• the Met put some resources into tracking down and investigating the flasher, and hand over a chunky file to the CPS
• the Met record lots of NCHIs against women online who say "fuck no, we don't want flashers in our changing rooms"

So they’re still recording non crimes… 🙄

Racists like you should be relieved.

I’ve no evidence you are a racist, of course, but I’d still like to put it on record here that I feel you are one. The only question now is how to stop you escalating.

But you wouldn't be told about it and would have no chance to defend yourself.
I

Well we definitely won't get to hear about them if they don't investigate them! This seems like a fudge to me. They need to be scrapped completely.

I agree.

Okay well, you've made your point well here

@mumofoneAloneandwell you misunderstand.

Crimes are still crimes. Any criminal behaviour, like being verbally abusive, aggressive, causing disorder- still crimes. Nothing has changed.

If those crimes have a racist element to them, they are also ‘hate crimes’.

There are times when people express offensive beliefs and opinions.
I could say that gingers are ugly, gingers have rotten tempers, gingers smell. That’s not a crime. It isn’t a crime to say those things.

To say those things repeatedly, to shout them at someone with ginger hair, to put my face in their face and shriek, Go home you scabby ginger!… That’s a crime.

Most people think that it’s wrong to record incidents which are not crimes, with no investigation, no process, no informing the person against whom the record is made.

That’s not justice. It’s outrageous.

How is this a victory? It's even worse! Now they are recording them as if it's a fact without even investigating it! Wtf???

Things that are crimes remain criminal. Nothing has changed there.
This is about non-crime incidents. Things that were never crimes in the first place.

Thank you and of course I don’t actually think you are a racist.

The alarming thing to me is:

1. What I did just then, at least until a recent court judgment, was literally enough to have a NCHI recorded against you. Not in some hyperbole making-a-point way, but literally. The perception of any other person being sufficient, with no crime attached, and the police not to investigate whether that perception is reasonable or not. Just record it. Hopefully police would have the common sense to ignore my report in practice, but if they were following the rules they shouldn’t do.

2. NCHIs were meant to be an intelligence gathering tool, but the fact they are given to the police to administer and then disclosed for things like employment checks made them a parallel justice system with no safeguards. I actually don’t object so much to NCHI type intel being gathered in the way that MI5, say, might. Actually to build a picture and and to be assessed as one fragment of evidence, with the normal safeguards attached, about who might be a risk of committing serious crime. But police NCHIs seemed to take the place of investigation not to support investigation.

I agree that if the Met is still going to record and pass on NCHIs but now with even less filtering attached, that’s not necessarily a good thing. I’d be happy if it’s a step to their abolition though.

They were already doing that.

Exactly.
This isn’t a win in any way shape or form imo.

It’s worse, it will probably just blindly be logged now. (Which, Tbf, is probably what they were doing anyway)

Currently you dont have to actually have done it. Just be accused of it. Or the person accusing you just needs to think that you were racist even if you weren't. Its a ridiculous system.

I’m confused why you’re confused?

This is not changing the thresholds of criminality.

i.e. It does not mean that hate crimes are no longer being investigated, and I’m not sure how you’ve got to the conclusion it does mean that?

It means Non-crime hate incidents are no longer being investigated.

Things that do not meet the definition of a crime.

Things the police should have no business getting involved with in the first place.

Do you think police should be spending time and resources investigating people’s hurt feelings?

Spending time investigating matters they know are not illegal?

Logging them on your file, and you have no knowledge and no recourse to defend yourself?

It then showing up on a DBS check and harming your employment prospects.
And the whole time, you have no idea a black mark has been put against your name?

You really think that’s fair enough?

I think we're trying to make cat calling a crime though? Its impact on young women is disgusting

This approach to NCHIs seems to be how the Police treat low level intelligence generally. If someone calls them up, tells an officer on the street, etc. it gets noted down for the local intelligence officer and filed. It only gets looked at if something related happens or if an anticipated problem causes officers to see what we know on such and such. Unless the reporter is known to the police and has a history of providing high quality intelligence, all such reports are treated as unproved allegations and potentially vexatious. It’s only in aggregate that they might be considered to have any weight, and even then it’s just suspicion. It wouldn’t be considered “true” until it was corborated. If there was a murder of a trans person then any NCHIs they’d submitted would be looked at. But so would negative messages they’d received in RL or virtually, and anyone they or someone close to them had identified as potentially having a bone to pick with them.

I think there are some hard questions the police need asking if a single uncorroborated report that might isn’t even hateful if a rational person looks at the facts, like this goes into a DBS report, which I’ve not heard to be the case, but otherwise I don’t think it would be reasonable stop the police from collecting intelligence in this manner. Satisfying TRA’s persecution complex isn’t the main use of NCHIs. The police need holding to account more for their biased policing - and that matter whether they record NCHIs or not.

Thank you for this response, its helpful to read