The police are making more than 30 arrests a day over offensive posts on social media and other platforms.
Thousands of people are being detained and questioned for sending messages that cause “annoyance”, “inconvenience” or “anxiety” to others via the internet, telephone or mail.
Custody data obtained by The Times shows that officers are making about 12,000 arrests a year under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988.
The acts make it illegal to cause distress by sending “grossly offensive” messages or sharing content of an “indecent, obscene or menacing character” on an electronic communications network.
Officers from 37 police forces made 12,183 arrests in 2023, the equivalent of about 33 per day. This marks an almost 58 per cent rise in arrests since before the pandemic. In 2019, forces logged 7,734 detentions.
The statistics have provoked criticism from civil liberties groups that the authorities are over-policing the internet and threatening free speech using “vague” communications laws.
As director of public prosecutions, Sir Keir Starmer issued Crown Prosecution Service guidance stating that offensive social media messages should only lead to prosecution in “extreme circumstances”.
Analysis of government data shows that the number of convictions and sentencings for communications offences has dramatically decreased over the past decade.
……..There has been an outcry about police “overreach” and fears that officers could be “curtailing democracy” by arresting people for malicious communications offences.
The Times reported last week that Hertfordshire police sent six officers to detain a couple and put them in a cell for eight hours after their child’s primary school objected to the volume of emails they sent and “disparaging” comments made in a WhatsApp group.
Maxie Allen, 50, and Rosalind Levine, 46, were questioned on suspicion of harassment, malicious communications and causing a nuisance on school property. After a five-week investigation, the police concluded that there should be no further action.
A police officer also said that elected officials could be treated as harassment suspects if they continued advocating for the couple.
………Jake Hurfurt, head of research and investigations at Big Brother Watch, a civil liberties group, said the increase of arrests for communications offences is “seriously concerning”.
He said: “Police look to be wasting countless hours on arresting people for posting things online that, while offensive, are not illegal. Heavy-handed use of vague communications offences is a threat to everyone’s freedom to express themselves online.
“Police must remember that free speech is a right, and only intervene when absolutely necessary, because needless arrests for social media posts have a chilling effect that will cause the decline of our democratic culture.
“These statistics are seriously concerning and the home secretary should instigate an independent review into police arrests for online speech and the health of free expression in the UK.”
The wife of a conservative councilor was arrested and sent to prison for expressing anger over the murder of three girls by 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana.
This is Axel Rudakubana. His family is from Rwanda.
A Jewish man was arrested and charged for mocking the leader of Hezbollah by holding up a cartoon for three minutes. The placard depicted Lebanese terror chief, Hasan Nasrallah, with a pager and the words “beep, beep, beep”. The imbecile cop thought it would “stir up racial hatred further”.
Let me get this straight. Protesting against a violent, Islamic ideology masquerading as a ‘religion’ is going to ‘stir up racial hatred further’ against the Western society they want dead?
That’s as retarded as their “please don’t attack us” campaign they aired in Pakistan.
Britain is in the throes of suicide. It allows violent terrorist muzzie pigs onto its soil and the ensuing carnage is condoned by gutless law enforcement. They murder, rape, and commit acts of terrorism with impunity while citizens who speak out against it are censored, harassed, and prosecuted.
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Mark Rowley threatened to EXTRADITE and imprison American citizens over online posts.
Good luck with that, motherfucker.
Tommy Robinson is right. It’s become an authoritarian Sharia nightmare.
“Hate speech” is what the government overlords say it is. It only applies to an arbitrary protected class: i.e. trannies and violent Middle Eastern religious cults. Mention the fact that there are only two biological human genders, use the wrong ‘pronoun’, or even point out that muslims are part of a brutal extremist sect that kills infidels worldwide, and you could end up in jail. Freedom of speech in the UK, Germany, France, and Canada, have eroded thanks to their idiotic liberal stance on muzzie ‘migrants’. The respective governments have actually made it a crime to criticize the very murderous Islamic ‘culture’ that slaughters their citizens, refuses to assimilate and has established ‘no-go zones’ and enclaves for their Sharia-based oppression. Christians don’t get the same considerations.
There’s a growing contingent of groups/individuals who want everything that makes them feel ‘victimized’, criminalized. Gays, minorities, leftwing moonbats, you name it, try to censor anything that offends them through “lawfare”, and violence.
Autocrats are all too happy to oblige.
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