It’s Not the Police’s Job to Shut Down Political Debate. They Should Stick to Solving Crime

THE OBSERVER – OPINION: The appeals court has rightly upheld Harry Miller’s freedom to express his views

Aman gets a call from a police officer. He is told that, while he has done nothing criminal, his social media posts have offended someone, so the police have recorded them as a non-crime hate incident that may show up on criminal record checks. The officer warns that if he continues to “escalate” matters, the police may take criminal action against him, a message later reinforced by his superiors.

It may sound like something out of a police state. But this happened in Britain in 2019, in a case that led the high court judge who later ruled the actions of Humberside police force unlawful to warn them, “in this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi”. Despite there being no evidence that Harry Miller, the man in question, might ever stray into unlawful speech, the police took action that reasonably led him to believe that he was being warned not to exercise his right to freedom of expression on pain of potential criminal prosecution; they also opined to the press that Miller’s tweets were “transphobic”.

And just before Christmas, in a landmark judgment that has attracted surprisingly little commentary from human rights lawyers given its profound implications, the court of appeal went further in ruling that the College of Policing’s guidance that the police should record all non-crime hate incidents, as perceived by those taking offence at them, is an unlawful incursion on citizens’ freedom of expression. » | Sonia Sodha | Sunday, January 2, 2022