This is why people are losing respect for the police...

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lovelyhead said:
Is it illegal to say to someone they look like a lesbian? Genuine question.
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Nope lol!

I mean it's supposedly an arrest for a "public order" offence with the addition of a "hate crime" element to enhance it... but the officers present are so ****ing dumb that they were unable to grock that simply making a comment like that isn't even intended to be insulting or homophobic... especially when the mother, before they even arrested the daughter, pointed out that she's autistic and has a lesbian grandmother.

She does look like she might well be a lesbian!

Secondly, a public order offence is supposed to be stuff like breach of the peace etc.. AFAIK, but they're not in public they're in a private home though even if the apparent public order offence did occur in public you need (AFAIK) a third party to be present.

For example, AFAIK, if you start shouting and swearing at police in your local high street while others are present you may be arrested for a public order offence/breach of the peace, but if you're down some quiet lane and there is no one else about or you're on your own driveway then swearing at the police, though not advisable, isn't an offence... they can be at your front door and if you're not under arrest or obliged to go with them then AFAIK you're able to tell them to **** off etc.
 
How can you arrest someone for calling them lesbian. It’s a factual statement. If you find it offensive surely you are suggesting it’s wrong to look like a lesbian.

I don’t know if it’s a case of me getting older and not liking the police or the fact they have indeed changed the way they behave but I don’t like them one bit. It might just be that with social media we are now finding out what they are really like. I do feel bad for what black people had to put up with in the 80s and 90s because it was probably terrible.
 
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I really think we need a written constitution sometimes, free speech ought to be a much more robust right.

Arresting someone because you don't like what they have to say ought to be a breach of a fundamental right and should have consequences for the police, when it comes to low-level "crimes" like that then it's the arrest itself that's the most inconvenient part so even if the CPS then later tell the police they're being incredibly dumb the main punishment has already been dished out and seemingly with little consequence to the police officers who in some cases may well be knowingly abusing their powers.

For example, there was a clip a while back of an inspector arresting someone for a public order offence because he was filming some illegally parked police cars and the inspector didn't like what he had to say... that's an obvious abuse of police powers by someone apparently experienced and senior enough to know much better but went seemingly went without consequence for the person abusing their powers of arrest.
 
The biggest problem isn't this being one overzealous officer being dumb, this is 8 officers each more of a dribbling mess than the next conspiring together, it wasn't a heat of the moment "you're nicked"

Not one of them thought, nah the best outcome of this arrest will still look terrible, they all derped along safe in the knowledge they will get away with it, because they are better than the plebs.
 
Sythe79 said:
The biggest problem isn't this being one overzealous officer being dumb, this is 8 officers each more of a dribbling mess than the next conspiring together, it wasn't a heat of the moment "you're nicked"
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I doubt think it's them conspiring, the WPC got a bit neurotic/triggered and decided she wanted to arrest the kid and the others didn't want to go against their colleague.

Same sort of mentality as some US police officers getting violent etc.. and their colleagues letting it happen.

Some of the officers in this instance probably did know the arrest was incredibly dubious but they're morally weak people and didn't have the backbone to speak up presumably as it would risk making them unpopular with their police colleagues.
 
Yeah, I think in the current climate it would be very tough for another officer to go to her and tell her this is at the very least, inappropriate, to arrest a kid for.
 
I completed my conflict resolution training on Wednesday, do the police not have similar training? Because those ***** all looked eager to escalate rather than deescalate the situation. A situation, I might add, that was entirely of their own making.
 
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I come from a police family and used to be one of their biggest supporters. Nowadays I have come to really hate a lot of the police and how they behave. They are a disgrace.
 
Malevolence said:
I completed my conflict resolution training on Wednesday, do the police not have similar training? Because those ***** all looked eager to escalate rather than deescalate the situation. A situation, I might add, that was entirely of their own making.
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Yeah, I remember a case from last year I think it was where a youtube videor (think it was one of the guys on Lotus Eaters) was down at a women's rights conference or something and was speaking to a woman just generally about women's rights with her, totally pleasant conversation and an officer came up to him and accused him of a "hate crime" based on his conversation and he challenged the officer on it as literally nobody was offended, no complaint had been made and that they could even review the video. After a bit, you could see an older officer was listening in and you could see even he was a bit bemused about the younger officer.

Harry Miller (ex-officer) is quite vocal about this sort of stuff as it's coming out of the police teaching college about how the police need to go in hard against "hate crime" as if they don't it will escalate to genocide (I kid you not). It's one of the reasons behind non-crime, hate incident reports.
 
Arms lengths bodies need to be shut down and the ministries need to stop deflecting responsibility for things that are clearly their responsibility to deal with and not just moan about for headlines.
 
Jokester said:
...totally pleasant conversation and an officer came up to him and accused him of a "hate crime" based on his conversation and he challenged the officer on it as literally nobody was offended, no complaint had been made and that they could even review the video. After a bit, you could see an older officer was listening in and you could see even he was a bit bemused about the younger officer.
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The officer was hardly young, he looked to be in his 40/50's. But two points about that:

1) The officer said he was going to arrest him under Section 5 of Public Order Act 1986 for using 'insulting' language. 'Insulting' was removed from Section 5 about 10 years ago, so it wasn't even illegal even if it was insulting. They don't even know the law they are supposed to be enforcing.
2) If I remember rightly, several other officers joined in by standing around the officer and the interviewer to back up the police officer. At no point did any other officer correct the first officer by correctly stating it wasn't actually a crime. Very similar to this case with the 16 year old girl, where the officers are either all ignorent of the law they are supposed to enforce, or too cowardly to step in against corrupt police.
 
Just watched the video of the arrest of that girl, that's absolutely horrific - have they said why the police were there?

Edit: Kid had been brought home drunk by the police apparently :p

Apologies about Mike Graham/TalkTV, but it's interesting to see the ex-officer's take on it as well.
 
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