Residents of Warminster and surrounding areas, rejoice, as crime has been eliminated in your shire – or alternatively beware, if you are a hater:
The focus on tonight's #999WhatsYourEmergency is hate crime – there is NEVER an excuse to spread hate.
— Wiltshire Police (@wiltshirepolice) July 24, 2017
Hate has no home in Wiltshire. Report anything that makes you question if you're being treated fairly #999WhatsYourEmergency
— Wiltshire Police (@wiltshirepolice) July 24, 2017
You can't hide from us if your spewing abuse from behind a computer screen. Our boys & gals in blue will find you í ½í²» í ½í±€#999WhatsYourEmergency
— Wiltshire Police (@wiltshirepolice) July 24, 2017
I remain quite uncomfortable with the idea of “hate crimes”, in part because so many hate crimes are crimes already, and in part because other hate crimes verge into the subjective categories of offence. I don’t believe it’s a job of society to criminalise hurts and a good use of limited and stretched law enforcement resources to police feelings. By all means, pursue assaults, vandalism or stalking, but if I were to walk through Trowbridge at night (no, I don’t know why I would be doing such thing, but bear with me) and some drunken yob tells me “to f*** off back to Poland, you Polish c***” I dare say I wouldn’t be taking the Wiltshire Police’s valuable time complaining about local nativist hate. As those who have fell foul of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act know, the definitions are wide and flexible, and the test largely subjective; to make crimes on such basis is very dangerous.
On the other hand…
All that talk about abuse and fairness got me thinking, and in the end I felt compelled to report one disturbing recent incident. We all have to stay vigilant, after all.
Hey @wiltshirepolice, this really hot girl on Tinder did not swipe right on me.
— Arthur Chrenkoff (@TheDailyChrenk) July 25, 2017
P.S. For a previous British police initiative, see here:
If only the Greater Glasgow Police had followed its own posting protocols…
