Police accused of ‘totalitarian’ attack on free speech as officer turns up to tell woman to apologise over Facebook post
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/police-totalitarian-attack-free-speech-apology-5HjdDDC_2/
Posted by tylerthe-theatre
Police accused of ‘totalitarian’ attack on free speech as officer turns up to tell woman to apologise over Facebook post
https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/police-totalitarian-attack-free-speech-apology-5HjdDDC_2/
Posted by tylerthe-theatre
32 Comments
> “You’re here because somebody got upset? Is it against the law? Am I being arrested?”
Unfortunately, in the UK, potentially yes
We had it right when it made actual hate and calls for violence a crime
That slippery slope though. Essentially anything can e illegal if it’s deemed to have upset someone enough
It transpires that, after a complaint was made to the Police, they’ve not only dropped the charge but also lost the details of the initial complaint.
That said I think the Officer wasn’t overly keen to be there, but someone made the decision to send him to interview her.
>Ms Anderson, a member of the campaign group Free Speech Union, later told the officer she is an elderly woman and a cancer patient.
I was fully on her side until I read that she’s a member of the Free Speech For Me Not For Thee Union.
Now wondering what it was that she wrote.
Who tells that plod to go do this? Looks like he’s following orders and made himself and his force look like complete plonkers.
I’d imagine she will be some kind of hateful troll who’s said something truly awful. However, this really isn’t something that we should be allocating police resources to at a time where crimes like burglary aren’t being investigated, beyond the issue of a crime number.
That she’s a cancer patient is totally irrelevant. And it’s hard to judge whether the visit was over-reach without knowing what the actual comment was. If she was threatening to set someone’s kids on fire, then a visit from the cops would be pretty reasonable.
The real issue here is the this bit: “claiming they’ve accidentally deleted the record of the complaint”.
Getting a bit fed up of reading about shit like this. Seem to have plenty of time for these mundane and let’s be honest a joke that police time has been put into this. Meanwhile another week another girl or women been attacked.
Until they release the actual comment, I can’t say whether or not this is fair. I think people that called for mass arson of mosques in the UK riots last year deserved their punishments, even those who went to prison, and if this is something similar then fair enough, she’s not even been charged with anything.
What was her original Facebook post? I’m guessing nothing important
Shouldn’t hang his keys there, asking for trouble should he end up scrapping someone and they lose on eye when he armbars them
When the Police are called out for foul behaviour they get upset…
The whole something we believe you have written on face book has upset someone really is bullshit. It gives an awful lot of power to the easily offended if they can set the police on someone for what appears to be an extremely flimsy basis. It’s actually pretty crazy the police have the time to do this.
Are the police trying to cause the chaos Reform needs to pick up votes? Is this just scores of individual cases of police insanity or an actual strategy?
Waste of police resources and fuel for the right wing, all in all a bad show.
I always wonder with cases like this, do the coppers all pull straws to see who has to go and tell someone to apologise for their Facebook commentary? I certainly wouldn’t volunteer to go and do it.
A lot of context is missing here. Like the initial allegation of crime.
Reading between the lines it appears that the lady in the video has said something deragtory about a certain group of people online or a person online.
Malicious communications and our hate crime laws are very broad brush strokes and it really doesn’t take much for one, the other, or both to be triggered.
It appears the officer is there to “square up” the crime as in make it go away without any further involvement from the courts or police. In this case if the lady apologises then the victim or complainant will drop the investigation. If the lady doesn’t apologise then the investigation may have to be progressed.
It’s more than likely that the lady in the video stuck to her guns told the officer to fuck off and off he left. Taking that information to the victim and then explaining the legal system the victim either couldn’t be bothered with all of that shit or they had cooled off and didn’t really care about it anymore – therefore the investigation is now dropped because the victim one way or another is unwilling. It could also be that the officer told the victim that the lady is very ill to which the victim decided to not proceed. However I am nearly speculating that has happened.
The most likely sequence of events is the lady in the video has posted something in Facebook about someone/group of people, the victim or complainant has reported it to the police, the police have identified the suspect and gone to see them, they have poorly explained what has happend but cannot go into details as it would consitite an interview which is governed by PACE, seeing the suspect is a very ill woman and deciding not to press her further for an out of court disposal, the officer has relayed this information back to the victim/complainant who has then decided to fuck the whole thing off.
Post to social media and some quack USA right wing free speech association that they beat the commies and farm faux outrage.
Too add this same organisation free speech advocates of the USA or whatever it’s called then decided to state that the police “lost” the investigation which I can safely say is a load of bolloxs
Bit weird to have a story about this without stating what the post was.
Honestly I never really got heavy use of social media and spilling your personal life to the world. I mean sure I rarely use it to keep up with acquaintances (none of my closest friends), but really people who post anything remotely controvers under their own name online are absolutely stupid.
Online activity should be pseudonymous/anonymous as possible. Closed group chats through messenger apps are ok, but not the open internet.
This is one of those moments where I’m honestly embarrassed of my country, “even if your a young single woman, your not allowed to carry pepper spray, it might hurt the eye’s of your attackers”, “Oh, you killed someone who broke into your property and made you fear for your life? Sorry your going to prison”, “You made a post on the internet that wasn’t an attempt at cyber bullying but it made someone feel bad? You get to go prison!”. (I admit I don’t actually know what the comments in this incident were, I just meant in general)
As much as I despise Hate speech and it’s ilk, free speech only works when it’s for everyone, well, so long as it doesn’t infringe on a person’s right to go about their day without actually being attacked.
So what was the post? No one seems to state. If it’s that inoffensive surely someones printed it?
Isn’t that woman who’s a Trump supporting free speech advocate, lucky she isn’t living in Trump’s America where people are losing their livelihoods for daring to exercise their supposed right to free speech.
Thames valley police are having quite the week.
This, arresting those who did the Trump projections and demanding that an anti Trump advertising van leaves the area.
A serious investigation should be taken into the leadership at Thames Valley police.
People really need to be taught the basics of the criminal justice system. Regardless of whether you agree with the nature of the offence being investigated here, this article is riddled with hyperbole and ignorance as to how the criminal justice system works.
The officer is clearly there to try and deal with whatever it is in the lowest possible way. An admission generally means that he can issue an out of court disposal (probably a community resolution) with the condition of an apology. This is perfectly normal and happens everyday in the UK for a variety of low level offences.
If the officer cannot do that for any reason, then the next step is an interview. It’s not a threat, it is explaining the process.
Similarly further down the article. Police in the UK have a power of arrest without warrant for pretty much all PACE offences. They have to have suspicion of the offence and a defined necessity for arrest.
The irony is that her idol is currently censoring and punishing his dissenters in the US, so as his admirer shouldn’t she be happy that the police are mirroring his tactics in the UK?
I read this comment a while ago and it made me laugh at how accurate it was lol; “In the UK, everything is policed except crime.”
They’ll send an officer out for something like this but not go find my stolen laptop even though I had the exact location of the Tottenham court road shop it was currently residing in…
It’s really challenging the police’s credibility when they have largely thrown in the towel on crimes like housebreaking, shoplifting and mobile phone snatching but appear to have infinite resources to throw at Twitter thought crimes.
I probably disagree with what she said, if she was expounding MAGA policies, but I will defend to the death her right to say it.
To do otherwise is just not British!
There’s a certain irony about this woman complaining that the police are behaving like ‘totalitarian psychopaths’, whilst she herself is a Trump supporter.
I’m surprised she didn’t salute them on the way out.
I fucking ***cannot wait*** for all the usual right-wing US talking heads to chime in on the Orwellian downfall of the UK, not mention any nuance of this, and either studiously avoid talking about or actually just directly defend (depending on how far down the rabbit hole they are) their own government just openly and nakedly swinging its dick around to hammer at anyone who is being vaguely critical of them or crossing lines on the narrative the White House wants to set out.
Someone literally contacted my employer to accuse me of being a nonce and a zoophile because I’m openly trans online. I never got a response from the police. I was also stalked and harassed for 7 months by someone who kept block evading, but because a threat to my life hadn’t been made in 4 months when I reported it, the police washed their hands of it.
Articles like this are such ragebait, because they make it sound like the police routinely give a fuck, when they verifiably do not.
They do this shit but say dealing with the guy who stole my things is a fucking civil matter?