Hating people is not a crime, says outgoing chief inspector

HATING people is not a crime and the police should stick to enforcing the law rather than trying to create offences that do not exist, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary has warned.

Sir Tom Winsor said there was no such thing as a “thought crime” and he reminded senior police officers it was not their job to declare someone’s hatred of another as an offence.

A number of police forces now treat misogyny and transphobia as hate crimes, which reflects increasing public concern about such behaviour.

The trend was led by Sue Fish, the former Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire Police, who declared misogyny a hate crime in 2014, pledging that her

‘It is not the right of the police to declare anything criminal, least of all what people might think’

officers would treat wolf-whistling and cat-calling as harassment.

In his final report before stepping down from his post later this month, Sir Tom said it was Parliament’s job to create laws – not the police.

In an apparent swipe at Ms Fish, he said: “It is not appropriate for senior police officers, serving or retired, to assert the right of the police to declare anything criminal, least of all what people might think. They have no legal power to create criminal offences in their police areas or anywhere else. It is important no one is misled, the police enforce the law they do not create it.”

Sir Tom, who has been in the post for a decade, said he believed policing had improved over that time. However, he said some forces were still failing to properly investigate certain criminal offences such as burglary, fraud, cybercrime and domestic violence, which he described as “murder in slow motion”.