‘Incompetent’ Essex Police set up terror-style incident group for single Allison Pearson tweet; meanwhile Commissioner sets up public meeting in local mosque with hate preacher connections.
Essex Police don’t even seem to know that they are in a hole, let alone that now (actually a week ago) was the time to stop digging.
To recap from Monday’s Telegraph, this is their best journalist Allison Pearson on what happened to her as she was getting ready for the Remembrance Service in her home town, somewhere in Essex. Allison is what Mary Jackson would have called a Good Egg. Amongst many articles about the perils of jihad, replacement, immigrantion, men pretending to be women and Israel she was a founder member of The October Declaration set up following the massaces of 7th October 2023. It was during this period that Mrs Pearson was writing and tweeting in grief and moved by the need to support Israel.
9.40am: All my things were laid out ready for Remembrance Sunday. Black dress, black opaque tights, coat, a new poppy to go with the vintage enamel one that glints in my jewellery box awaiting its annual outing. I was still not dressed when Himself called up to say that there were police at the door for me. I did vaguely wonder what on earth they were doing here – something to do with our road being closed for the parade? But I went downstairs to greet them at the door and apologised to the two young constables standing outside for still being in my dressing gown. I wasn’t sorry for long.
PC S, the one on the left, who did all the talking, told me that they were here to inform me that I had been accused of a non-crime hate incident (NCHI). It was to do with something I had posted on X (formerly Twitter) a year ago. A YEAR ago? Yes. Stirring up racial hatred, apparently.
“So what’s the name of the person who made the complaint against me?”
He wasn’t allowed to tell me that either, he said.
“You can’t give me my accuser’s name?”
“It’s not ‘the accuser’,” the PC said, looking down at his notes. “They’re called ‘the victim’.”
Ah, right. “OK, you’re here to accuse me of causing offence but I’m not allowed to know what it is. Nor can I be told whom I’m being accused by? How am I supposed to defend myself, then?”
The two policemen exchanged glances. Clearly, the Kafkaesque situation made no sense to them, either. I think, even by then, they dimly surmised they had picked on the wrong lady.
Shocked. I was definitely shocked. Astonished. That too. Upset. How could I not be? It’s never nice having the police at the door if you’re a law-abiding person, because police at the door can mean only one of two things: tragedy or trouble.
And as I spoke, warming to my theme, which was freedom, I realised how truly appalling this was. How un-British in the most painful way, this unwarranted intrusion of the state into my private life, this humiliating public reprimand for some casual comment online that had done what, exactly? Hurt whom, exactly? Stirred up hatred how, exactly? It was bloody outrageous.
We are living through an epidemic of stabbings, burglaries and violent crime – not the non-crime variety – which is not being adequately investigated by the police, yet they had somehow found time to come to my house and intimidate me.
I really don’t know what post they were referring to, although I do know that a year ago, I was consumed with the aftermath of the Oct 7 attacks by Hamas and the anti-Semitic slogans being brandished and chanted at pro-Palestine marches.
Standing there on the doorstep, I suddenly thought of my friend who earlier this year had reported domestic violence, coercive control and fraud by their partner to the same Essex police force that this pair before me belonged to. The lackadaisical response from a constable assigned to the case was that a) It was a first offence so the abusive person probably wouldn’t get charged so not worth bothering; b) The prisons were full so not worth bothering; and c) It was only my friend’s word against their partner.
On Sunday morning, I suppose there was a certain grim satisfaction in knowing that, here I was, living proof that two-tier justice exists in the UK.
On Tuesday evening, Essex Police issued a statement to The Telegraph saying that they were investigating me under Section 17 of the Public Order Act 1986, relating to material allegedly “likely or intended to cause racial hatred”. In other words, my tweet was being treated as a criminal matter, rather than a non-crime hate incident, but that is not what I was told on Sunday.
Purely by chance, I was scheduled to interview Bernie Spofforth on Monday for this week’s Planet Normal podcast. After the Southport massacre, in which three little girls were stabbed to death at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class, Bernie, a successful Cheshire businesswoman, retweeted a post that misidentified the alleged attacker as an asylum seeker. (The police told her that using the phrase “asylum seeker” was “racist”. Bernie had added the caveat, “If this is true”.) Normally the most conscientious researcher, Bernie realised her mistake and deleted the retweet within an hour, but not fast enough to avoid being partly blamed for inciting the Southport riots. It was a preposterous insinuation, and cynics might suggest the authorities were grateful for a white, middle-class scapegoat (look how keen they are to throw up a smokescreen around a crime if there is any hint of Islamist involvement). Six police officers came to Bernie’s farmhouse in three vehicles, including a van for prisoners. Treated like a terrorist in front of her ashen husband and daughter, she was taken to the police station and held in a cell for 36 hours. Just for a social media post, please note; not for being in possession of a bioweapon.
Bernie’s harrowing ordeal was followed by an NFA (No Further Action) ruling, because police evidence came nowhere near reaching the necessary threshold. Nonetheless, an emotional Bernie told me that, formerly a brave campaigner for truth in public life, she had been “destroyed” by what the police had done to her and the resulting damage to her reputation and career. Although my own brush with the law on Remembrance Sunday was a mere midge bite compared with what Spofforth endured I found myself getting tearful as I talked to her. For crying out loud, what has our country become? Big Brother really is watching us.
I asked Toby Young, the founder and general secretary of the FSU, to explain NCHIs to me. The idea, Toby says, is if you nip hateful behaviour in the bud while it is still non-crime, the person won’t go on to commit an actual crime. The trouble is, there is not a shred of evidence that it does anything of the sort.
the FSU managed to get an NCHI removed from no less a person than a vice-chair of the Conservative Party last year. And even Amber Rudd, when she was home secretary, had an NCHI recorded against her after an Oxford professor complained about a speech she had made at – wait for it – the Tory party conference.
If a senior politician can get slapped with a non-crime hate notice for making the not entirely controversial or repugnant suggestion that British job applicants should be prioritised over foreign workers, you know we really are in bonkers Alice in Wonderland, sentence-before-the-verdict territory.
During the week it has come to public attention that the Essex Police are deficient in their dealings with burglary, Domestic Violence, drug dealing, anti-semitic tweets and that Ben Julian-Harrington the Chief Constable believes that “Hate Speech” is the biggest threat to the community, as great as “rape, knife crime and child abuse”
The investigation against Mrs Pearson continues. I was reading much of what she wrote during that period and marched in events where the October Declaration was also present and never saw or read anything objectionable or that I would not have said myself.
Today it comes to light that another two police forces are involvedwith the investigation. So far as I know she still hasn’t been told what she said.
The scale of the investigation has now become clear, with officers from the Metropolitan Police, Sussex Police and Essex Police all having handled the complaint over the past year.
The Telegraph understands that the post was reported to the Metropolitan Police as a potential breach of the Malicious Communications Act in November last year. The case was then passed to Sussex Police, which marked it as a possible non-crime hate incident (NCHI) as well as a potential malicious communication.
Sussex Police passed it to Essex, where Pearson lives. It is understood Essex made two assessments of the complaint before opening an investigation under section 17 of the Public Order Act 1986, relating to material allegedly “likely or intended to cause racial hatred”, and visiting her house.
Essex has said Pearson’s alleged offence is being treated as a criminal matter, and not a non-crime hate incident.
Pearson said she was told on Sunday that it was a non-crime hate incident as well as allegedly inciting racial hatred. Essex Police has accused The Telegraph of presenting “wholly inaccurate information” as fact.
And to pursue that criminal matter this afternoon it was announced, as is the headline to this blog, that
Essex Police has set up a “gold group” usually reserved for dealing with major crimes to handle the investigation into a Telegraph journalist’s social media post.
It came as a county councillor accused Essex Police of “institutional incompetence and dysfunction on an epic scale”, and it emerged that the force had admitted it was unable to send an emergency response to all 999 calls about drug dealing.
Essex Police have been accused of ignoring 999 calls from concerned residents about drug deals on the streets, according to documents obtained by The Telegraph. Documents also revealed that Essex Police would not “dispatch a patrol car” every time it received a tip-off from a concerned resident.
At a community meeting in Uttlesford in February this year, police were told residents often saw drug deals being done in public and they believed police were not doing anything about it.
In response, Roger Hirst, the Essex Police Fire and Crime Commissioner, told several representatives who attended the meeting that the force took drug-related crime “very seriously”.
However, every call from the public “won’t always be by dispatching a patrol car”, he said. “It will more often be by using intelligence, building strong cases and taking away their ability to exploit and manipulate the children and young people they rely on to fuel this business.”
Roger Hirst is keen to meet the public and reassure them of police protection.
He is in Great Baddow on the outskirts of Chelmsford on Monday 18th November. The venue is given as Hamptons Sports and Leisure Great Baddow.
It sounds like a Sports and Leisure centre, doesn’t it. And once upon a time it was. All manner of sports, dancing, New Years Eve parties, student dances, military fairs, comedy nights, bars, a restaurant.
Then it was bought by the Chelmsford Islamic Society who said it would be run as a Sports and Leisure Centre for all, but with prayer space for use of Muslims. First the bars were ripped out (alcohol!), the dance groups were given notice (scanty clad women!) the dance floors were covered with mussallah carpet and a madrassa took over the other studios. This was done bit by bit and each step was declared by the local authority not to be such a material change of use that planning permission was required. Local residents are challenging this and this is their website here.
As well as the under-hand mission creep that has gradually turned a thriving Sports and leisure centre into a large and noisy mosque the institution has also played host to several very dubious preachers and da’wa merchants.
For example Haitham al Haddad who has been preaching hell-fire and brimstone upon homosexuals and Jews for over 30 years. Who told me to my face of the virtues of FGM to a young girl, although he said mutilation was not good, but as ‘circumcision it is an honour and a virtue’.
Hyde Park Corner, calling for a Jewish man to be removed from his sight. “Why don’t you take the Yahoudi [Jew] over there, far away so his stench doesn’t disturb us?”