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Hate “Incidents” Soar In England From Dog Poop To Disputed Tennis Line Calls

Metropolitan_Police_FlagI have been a critic of the alarming criminalizing of speech in Great Britain through hate speech laws.  Such laws create an insatiable appetite for greater and greater speech regulation and create a sense of empowerment among citizens to silence those with whom they disagree.  The most recent statistics from the Metropolitan Police for 2015 and 2016 seem to confirm those concerns.  The over 2,500 alleged “hate incidents” in just that one jurisdiction show a vast array of everyday gripes being reported as hate crimes from a dog pooping near a house of a disputed tennis match.  Hate speech arrests have according to one account risen by 900 percent and now involve thousands of such cases each year.  Nine people a day are being detained.

 

We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, particularly in France (here and here and here and here and here and here) and England ( here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). Much of this trend is tied to the expansion of hate speech and non-discrimination laws. Once allowed to criminalize speech, individuals and groups demand more and more prohibitions.  England is in a free fall over free speech.  The police have indicated that they are considering making wolf whistles the latest category of hate speech.We also have even seen comedians targeted with such court orders under this expanding and worrisome trend. (here and here).

One person found a dead rat in a garden while another complained that a man told library staff that he was campaigning in favor of Brexit. Another involved a dog barking at someone while another involved dog poop found outside of a home.  One person complained about a car accident where the other car has a poppy displayed.

A resident in an apartment building complained that a neighbor was committing a hate crime by “smoking heavily.”  A father filed a complaint when his daughter lost a tennis match in an disputed line call: “Informant feels his daughter was subjected to racial discrimination at a tennis match where line calls went against her.”

Clearly,  hate speech can take many forms but the threshold issue remains the same: should governments be able to criminalize speech alone as opposed to criminal acts.  As shown in the recent “pug case,” even offensive language can be criminalized.

Scotland Yard recently caused a stir by claiming that it has 900 officers dedicated to investigating alleged hate crimes.  The Times reported that British police are arresting nine people a day for posting “offensive messages online.” 

34 thoughts on “Hate “Incidents” Soar In England From Dog Poop To Disputed Tennis Line Calls”

  1. I’m reminded of countless times we’ve had to deal with miscreants attacking their nemeses by concocting fabricated stories about them abusing their children and sending it anonymously to Child Protective Services, which would then go on a guilty until proven innocent investigation to upheave the lives of their enemy’s family members. I’d say at least every month or two one of these came up to us because the caseworker there either wanted to pass the buck or was totally convinced the tale was true and the children were somehow in peril. It took about five or ten minutes to determine this was a crock and we could close out the case and go on to more important things such as filling up the car with gas or cleaning out the recycle bins in the office.

    The reason the BS case was filed through CPS to harass someone else was often because the perpetrator of the lie knew that CPS would go after the parent right off the bat without even declaring the complaint to be baseless from the beginning (they must investigate no matter how improbable), that they knew in filing an anonymous complaint with a Law Enforcement Agency would go nowhere because the officers can dismiss a complaint if there is no evidence to warrant an investigation. (and they know that a false report can result in their arrest).

    But the UK created a similar type of situation and it builds upon itself. Soon thousands of people will want to smack down their enemy neighbor and what a great way to do it with a government that virtue signals its complete willingness to prosecute people for the most minor of violations.

    Seems like Washington’s Child Protective Service is now running England.

  2. It used to be the Ten Commandments.

    Now it’s the Ten Million Commandments.

    Freedom is nullified in the land of the free.

    That dudn’t make any sense.

  3. Turley’s right.

    The Brits should arm up like Americans and then sort things out that way. Population will get rid of the anxious and people will be a lot better behaved. A bullet or a fine, take your choice.

  5. Precisely when did the freedom of discrimination become unconstitutional? If people cannot discriminate, people cannot be free. Discrimination is the first step of freedom. Discrimination is not property damage or physical injury which is implied in accusations of racism. Laws which nullify the freedom of discrimination are unconstitutional. People must adapt to the outcomes of freedom; freedom does not adapt to people, dictatorship does.
    ______________________________________________________________________________________

    United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization” (March 26, 1790).

    “Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person,…”
    _____________________

    “The influx of foreigners must, therefore, tend to produce a heterogeneous compound; to change and corrupt the national spirit; to complicate and confound public opinion; to introduce foreign propensities. In the composition of society, the harmony of the ingredients is all-important, and whatever tends to a discordant intermixture must have an injurious tendency.”

    – Alexander Hamilton
    _________________

    “If all earthly power were given me,” said Lincoln in a speech delivered in Peoria, Illinois, on October 16, 1854, “I should not know what to do, as to the existing institution [of slavery]. My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land.” After acknowledging that this plan’s “sudden execution is impossible,” he asked whether freed blacks should be made “politically and socially our equals?” “My own feelings will not admit of this,” he said, “and [even] if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not … We can not, then, make them equals.”

    – Abraham Lincoln

  7. I THINK THAT WE NEED TO CRIMINALIZE PEOPLE WHO USE ALL-CAPITAL LETTERS CONSISTENTLY IN INTERNET POSTS. IT’S VERY DISTRACTING AND ANNOYING AND MANY HAVE SAID THAT IT’S AKIN TO SHOUTING.

    1. Also, the use of caps might “scare us into failure”, as with the Leeds Trinity U. sudents.

  8. For all his faults, however, Trump has done little to expand or consolidate presidential power. If Trump appears as a plausible strongman, then the government in general and the presidency in particular have too much power. Much of the progressive anxiety about authoritarianism results from projecting their own philosophy of government onto their political opponents. What they would do to others, they assume others would do to them.
    http://thefederalist.com/2018/11/20/lefts-accusation-right-fascist-simply-psychological-projection/?utm_source=The+Federalist+List&utm_campaign=db15118e10-RSS_The_Federalist_Daily_Updates_w_Transom&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_cfcb868ceb-db15118e10-79248369

  9. This isn’t actually much different from prosecutions for blasphemy, which only went away comparatively recently. It’s what happens in places with unwritten constitutions – the State is never flatly forbidden to trample on civil liberties.

    Piers Morgan made fun of the US Constitution, calling it “our little book”, but I haven’t noticed that massive doorstop of a European Constitution protecting people from arrest for saying the wrong thing.

  11. People who don’t learn of the pure absurdity of the charges will use the 900% increase to justify more laws against hate speech.

  12. Our future under socialism. Make that your future under socialism.

    The option is move to free Mexico. comparatively speaking. One million of us now live south of the border six months or more per year. Is it dangerous? Hmmm what is the rate per 100,000 for your area?

    Here for us and like minded Canadians it’s .5 per hundred thousand or two per 200,000 meaning five a year. Mostly drug related and mostly within 50 miles of the border. plus the major tourist areas in the far south and mostly short term visitors.

    Is it expensive. I use my wallet for medical insurance. Fuel is more expensive but the rest including medical is 40% +/- 5% and you don’t have anything we don’t have. But you have Chicago.

    Compare that to your 30% devaluation of the buying power of the dollar under obama no nomics and the current struggle to revoke your tax cuts and block the next round of tax cuts for individuals and to then further raise your taxes and further devalue your money and in exchange go back to less than one percent COLA. Remember mantra… Not responsible for underfunded people. No mention of citizens.

    Nancy wants her crumbs it’s expensive being in the top 1/10th of the 1 percent at the top. I wonder how much a seat or chairmanship of a committee will cost this time I’m betting the majority party chair will double to one million. and choice of committee to a quarter million. on Nancy’s Crumbs Menu.

    Time for the ICD to separate and then take over second party status.

    1. We aren’t going to discuss Ivanka’s e-mails because Turley wants the A.G. job.

      In fact, Turley always falls back on ‘regulation of speech’ when real news features stories annoying to Trump.

        1. Before the pair of you cast aspersions on our host, perhaps you could trouble to perform a single GOOGLE search. If you did, you would have found Professor Turley’s televised remarks on the matter.

    2. I am just going to cut and paste, since you’ve asked this question on all threads. And, PH, if Turley was shying away from the topic, why was he interviewed on the very subject on Fox News?

      Sure, Fish Wings. Here is Professor Turley’s take on the matter:

      http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/11/20/turley-ivanka-trump-use-private-emails-baffling-not-same-level-hillary

      I agree that it was baffling for her to conduct any business, no matter how trivial, on a private email. However, due to the precedent set by Hillary Clinton, she could send the plans to the latest nuclear sub to her nanny and not get prosecuted.

      Similarities – she discussed government scheduling business through a private email.

      Differences – She didn’t lie about the private email, she didn’t withheld records of those emails from the government, destroy private emails discussing government business, set up a series of private servers in her bathroom, where anyone with access to her house with zero security clearance could access them, she didn’t have tech guys without any clearance back it up to the Cloud, which is like shouting the contents on the street corner, she did not distribute classified information, she didn’t lie and claim she didn’t recognize classified material or markings, she didn’t destroy thousands of those emails while under subpoena, she didn’t wipe her pirate server where she hid her communications with Bleach Bit and Acid Wash, and then lie about it, shrug her shoulders, mug for the camera, and ask, “Do you mean, did I wipe it with a cloth?”

      What Ivanka did was wrong. It is not in the same galaxy as what Hillary Clinton did. After Hillary Clinton got off for acts several orders of magnitude greater and in violation of multiple federal laws including the mishandling of classified information, they had better not look hard at Ivanka, who never discussed any classified information at all.

      That said, really Ivanka?

      Hope this clarifies the question obviously preying upon your mind today.

  14. JT doesn’t need to go to England to see a surge in hate incidents. We have them in Dunkin Donuts for using their free Wifi without a purchase, in a classroom for putting feet on a chair, in Starbucks for waiting for a friend, for returning home and having to prove who you are and why you are there, for being at home (and getting killed), for using the swimming pool in your condo. The list goes on.

    1. C’mon Betty! Get real. Do you really think that booting out a non-paying customer is on a par with say, Antifa putting on masks and taking up baseball bats to beat Republicans because they disagree with them??? You really think that you are an open-minded person when you pass up Demo-fascist youth attacking Ann Coulter and Ben Shapiro on campus to go and light on some cheapskate black who has squatted on a Starbucks table???

      You are mentally ill. You don’t live in 2018. You live somewhere in your past or in the past.

      Squeeky Fromm
      Girl Reporter

        1. Plus, crying racism allows one to continue to live in the movie playing in their head, as Scott Adams defines cognitive dissonance.

          If Betty had to live in 2018, then her belief system about poor oppressed negroes would collapse. I would suggest that she visit The French Quarter at 3:00 AM on Friday night, wearing expensive jewelry, and flashing C-notes. But, she would probably not survive her encounter with the oppressed black youth.

          Squeeky Fromm
          Girl Reporter

        2. The implication is that simple racism, as opinion and freedom of discrimination, is violent; causing property damage and bodily injury.

    2. I fear you missed the point: For humans, once the personal grievance paranoia has been adequately fed, it becomes easier to blame any “incident” – in which the music stopped and left you chairless – on some overarching “enemy” that supposedly hates you.

    3. Not only is it rude to use an establishment’s WiFi or bathroom without a purchase, it is against most store policy. Starbucks had to hastily reverse it’s Open Door policy when the homeless started using it as a public toilet and drove paying customers out.

      I’m Caucasian, and I’ve been to places where you have to buy something to use the facilities or hang out. Over the years, like everyone else, I learned that it’s not only store policy, but also the right thing to do.

      There was a cafe that I knew of that had to severely truncate its hours because there were too many loiterers and not enough paying customers. That’s not discrimination; it’s basic math and common decency.

      Let’s also explore that incident at Chipotle. A manager was fired because she told two customers that they had to pay in advance. One of the customers cried racism, and his complaint and video went viral. Only, it turned out that these guys had been dining and dashing all over town, bragged about it online, had done so to Chipotle two times before, and wrote online that they thought Chipotle might be on to them. But, when they were caught, and told, that’s enough. Pay first because we don’t want to get taken advantage of and have you steal our food for the third time, they lied and claimed nonexistent racism. That lie caused a Latino woman to get fired. Is she a mom? Does she have kids to support? These guys have the money to pay. They steal for fun and then publicly brag about it.

      People who don’t research these occurrences gossip about racism, and grow a false narrative without bothering to find out the truth. If you educate yourself, you might have your red pill moment that the US is not a particularly racist country.

      https://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/chipotle-fires-manager-who-refused-to-serve-black-customers-but-restaurant-admits-they-might-have-failed-to-pay-for-meals-before

  15. Censorship stinks. It is also here in America. It is here on other legal blogs. The Constitutional Law blog is at this moment censoring one of my comments on a story about Robert Kennedy. I did not employ the words “dog poop”.

      1. There is a “leftist poster” hanging on the wall of a university near my house. It is of Chairman Mao. The school should be punished.

      2. What is behind all this is that Democrats, Progressives, and Leftists can not tolerate any dissent. Therefore, if they criminalize speech, they can shut down any verbal or written opposition to them. The only message you will ever hear is the message they want you to hear.

        Fascist, totalitarian, and authoritarian to the frigging core. Which may not be a bad thing in the long run. Because when we get our Hitler or Pinochet, and the necessary Right Wing Death Squads, say about 75 years from now, he will already have the legal structure in place to shut up the Left for good. Too bad I won’t be here to see it.

        Squeeky Fromm
        Girl Reporter

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