Nick burglars? Not the Keystroke Kops

Here’s your starter for ten. What have Basil Brush, the pop song Kung Fu Fighting, and former Home secretary Amber rudd got in common? Answer: they’ve all been investigated by the police for ‘hate crime’.

In the case of Basil Brush, Northamptonshire Plod spent hours studying the video of an episode featuring a gipsy fortune-teller, after a complaint from a self-appointed ‘community leader’ that it was ‘racist and offensive’ to members of the notoriously lawabiding travelling community.

On the Isle of Wight, a beach-bar singer performing the 1974 novelty hit Kung Fu Fighting was arrested and accused of ‘racially aggravated harassment’.

someone of Chinese origin claimed to be offended by the lyrics and complained to the Old Bill, who took the singer into custody and interviewed him under caution.

And in 2016, Amber rudd was investigated over a speech about the status of foreign workers, which she made to the Tory conference in Birmingham. some obscure, disgruntled Left-wing lecturer complained to West Midlands police that she was inciting hatred against immigrants.

After extensive inquiries, a crack team of detectives concluded that no actual criminal offence had been committed, but her remarks would be recorded as a ‘non-crime hate incident’.

At the time, I remarked that it would take a heart of stone not to laugh, since rudd herself had been responsible for the Home Office guidelines which led to this ridiculous complaint being taken seriously.

These arbitrary rules reinforced the previous Labour government’s lazily drafted definition of a hate crime as: ‘Any incident . . . which is perceived by the victim or any

other person [my italics] as being motivated by prejudice or hate.’

Tony Blair’s 2003 Criminal Justice Act was one of the most sinister pieces of legislation ever introduced, since for the first time it made a specific crime a matter of opinion, not fact.

It gave licence to all manner of embittered, politically motivated zealots to make vexatious criminal complaints against anyone of whom they disapproved. Needless to say, ambitious police chiefs embraced the new law with unbridled enthusiasm, anxious to appease their political asters and burnish their promotion prospects.

THethree so-called hate crimes which I have singled out here, all of which appeared in this column, are simply pebbles in an avalanche of activism- driven investigations and prosecutions, which have escalated exponentially over the past decade. In the last year alone, more than 94,000, increasingly ludicrous, alleged hate crimes have been recorded.

At the same time, police forces — sorry ‘ services’ — have turned their backs on burglary, robbery and violent disorder, closing police stations and withdrawing from the streets to spend their days playing Keystroke Kops and trawling the internet for ‘inappropriate’ remarks. I’ve been writing about warped police priorities for the past three decades, but the crisis has worsened alarmingly in recent years.

For instance, 12 months ago it was revealed that Devon and Cornwall Police had no officers available to answer 999 calls, because they were all attached to specialist units. Yet in the week this news emerged, the very same constabulary announced it would be setting up a new directorate aimed at tackling hate crime.

Next door, Avon and somerset Police actually disbanded its burglary squad, after managing to solve just ten per cent of 70,552 reported break-ins and failing to recover £40 million worth of stolen property.

shortly afterwards, they unveiled a new initiative to crack down on ‘gender-based hate crime’.

Barely a day goes by without yet another story about one police force or another refusing to investigate burglaries. This week, one of them was advising householders to hunt for their own stolen property on eBay.

Over the years, I’ve received thousands of letters and emails complaining about police indifference and incompetence — a considerable proportion from both serving and retired coppers, horrified at the dereliction of duty and political posturing of senior officers.

so you might expect me to join the chorus of approval which has greeted this week’s speech from sara Thornton, chairman of the National Police Chiefs Council.

At a conference in London, she said police should concentrate on burglary and violent crime, instead of pursuing fashionable new hate crimes such as wolf-whistling.

sorry, include me out for now. Not even one cheer. I’ll believe it when I see it. This is the same sara Thornton who three years ago told the BBC that because of the savage Tory cuts, people couldn’t expect the Old Bill to respond to every burglary. They had more important things to do.

Nothing is going to change without political will. There’s not the remotest sign of that, even from a nominally Tory government.

It’s only a couple of weeks since the current Home secretary, sajid Javid, said he wanted to broaden the definition of hate crime to include ageism and misogyny, as well as extending the law to protect goths and punks.

And this madness from a man often tipped to be the next Conservative leader, and possibly Prime Minister. Heaven help us.

Anyway, sajid’s a bit late. Manchester Police beat him to it by six years, including ‘metallers and emos’ alongside goths and punks. I can recall joking at the time that it was now an offence to hate the sex Pistols.

AFTerthis week’s Waitrose nonsense, he’ll probably have to add vegans to the list, something I predicted two years ago. You couldn’t make it up.

There’s even been a suggestion that men should become a protected species. If that happens, the whole concept of hate crime will become not just meaningless, but redundant. sanity will not return until the hate crime statute is repealed altogether.

But I wouldn’t hold your breath. This week, while sara Thornton was on her hind legs promising a change of direction, the Home Office was launching yet another grandstanding, anti-hate crime campaign, costing £1.5 million.

According to the official press release, it aims ‘to help the public understand hate crime, particularly offences which often people do not recognise as criminal’.

In other words, criminalise something which most sensible people don’t even consider to be a crime.

so, after sara Thornton’s bold words this week, can we soon expect a similar campaign against burglars? What do you think?

We’ve more chance of seeing Basil Brush singing Kung Fu Fighting on prime time TV.

Boom, boom!