POLICE-IN-FOCUS-UK

It shouldn’t be a crime to insult someone | Mike Harris

Section five of the Public Order Act has a corrosive effect on free speech – it’s time to roll back the culture of offence

Sometimes you have to feel sorry for the police. Beyond already dealing with a raft of ill-considered laws, politicians also want them to act against “insulting” behaviour. Section five of the Public Order Act is so broad that almost any protester on any subject can be arrested and fined for harassment, causing “alarm or distress”.

It’s not merely theoretical; many ludicrous cases have been prosecuted. The police arrested a student who held up a sign stating Scientology was a cult – surely a matter of opinion? Kyle Little, a 16-year-old from Newcastle, was fined £50 with £150 costs for saying “woof” to a labrador dog in front of police officers. Eventually the magistrates’ decision was overturned by a crown court. The very arbitrary nature of deciding what is insulting gives the police a power they can misuse. After a night out with friends, Sam Brown asked a police officer: “Excuse me, do you realise your horse is gay?” Police took Brown to court after he refused to pay an £80 fine. The CPS eventually dropped the case.

Criminalising “insult” has a detrimental effect on freedom of expression. The term is so broad that it creates legal inconsistencies. There is legal authority that defacing the American flag is a non-insulting form of protest but burning a poppy is criminally insulting. It makes little sense.

These powers are widely used during protests. Protest is often directed at an unsympathetic audience and will often directly cause offence. Oil companies may feel insulted by accusations of having blood on their hands, but there is a clear public interest in having opinions on the behaviour of the powerful heard.

Lord Justice Sedley said in Redmond-Bate v DPP: “Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.”

Yet, the inclusion of “insulting” in the Public Order Act means there is no clear jurisprudence between the offensive speech protected by Sedley and insult as criminalised by the act. Unfortunately most of these cases will go nowhere near learned judges, and the majority of these fines won’t be challenged by a public that has never been informed of its rights. Very few of these cases get beyond a magistrates court, and divisional courts, where some of these fines have been quashed, are often loth to intervene.

When asked to determine the meaning of the word insulting under the previous form of the act, the House of Lords held in Brutus v Cozens that “parliament has given no indication that the word is to be given any unusual meaning. Insulting means insulting and nothing else”.

This law, combined with our culture of offence, means there is the expectation that opinions deemed offensive should be criminalised. Our tolerance of the harmless eccentric has waned. The British no longer raise an eyebrow at fringe opinions, but demand the full force of the law. One example is Harry Hammond, a 69-year-old evangelist street preacher. Hammond believed homosexuality was a sin and wanted everyone to know this. So he stood in the streets of Brighton proselytising against homosexuality with a sign proclaiming the catchy slogan: “Jesus Gives Peace, Jesus is Alive, Stop Immorality, Stop Homosexuality, Stop Lesbianism, Jesus is Lord.”

Instead of ignoring an old bigoted man, a crowd gathered. At one point he fell to the ground in a tussle over his placard, and soil and water were thrown over him. While Hammond was charged under section five, no one in the crowd was charged for assaulting him. He was fined £300 by a magistrate and ordered to pay costs of £395. The court also ordered the forfeiture of his sign. He died shortly after his conviction. Gay rights activist Peter Tatchell described Hammond’s prosecution as “an outrageous assault on civil liberties”.

While it’s easy to see how Hammond’s behaviour could rile a crowd, the danger with policing offence is that it’s highly subjective. Perhaps only a generation ago, when there was very little tolerance towards homosexuality, a gay pride march could have been prosecuted for insulting Christians like Hammond.

Luckily, liberty has friends in parliament. Conservative MP Dominic Raab discovered that section five was used 18,249 times in 2009. Less than one in six of these offences had a religious or racial element, the majority were for the non-specified crime of insult. Following pressure from the Liberal Democrats, the Home Office consulted on this issue. My organisation, Index on Censorship, has been lobbying hard for ministers to roll back the culture of offence which has a corrosive effect on free speech. Removing insult from section five would be a good start.

Finding the correct balance between public order and legitimate protest isn’t always easy. But asking the police to patrol offence has undermined public trust in them. Rightly so, for it is not the job of local bobbies or magistrates to protect citizens from insult. Christian preachers or mouthy anarchists may irritate, but in an open, free society, robust opinion will insult you: perhaps we all just need to get used to it.

Police gave teen cider before questioning him about burglaries

Two South Wales detectives disciplined after Sean Wall, 17, was given alcohol and interviewed about Cardiff raids

Two police detectives have been disciplined after a 17-year-old boy was plied with cider before being questioned about a series of burglaries.

Sean Wall admitted involvement in the raids even though he could not possibly have committed some of them because he was in custody at the time.

The two detective constables faced a South Wales police gross misconduct hearing last week in respect of four potential breaches of professional behaviour.

Two were found to be proven. The panel decided that one officer should receive a final written warning and a written warning and the other officer two written warnings.

Both officers admitted Wall had consumed alcohol in their company.

Wall’s solicitor, Nadeem Majid, told the Guardian the detectives collected Wall from Parc young offenders’ institution in Bridgend, where he was being held awaiting sentence on other matters.

Majid said he was picked up at 9am, driven around Cardiff and given two bottles of “strong cider” as the officers pointed out locations where burglaries had been carried out.

They then took Wall to Cardiff Bay police station and allegedly encouraged him to confess to the raids, telling him that admitting the crimes would not increase his sentence when he appeared before a crown court judge.

Majid said he presumed the police wanted to boost its detection rate by getting Wall to admit to unsolved burglaries.

Wall was interviewed at about 7pm at Cardiff Bay that day, Majid said, and admitted to 11 burglaries.

Shortly before midnight Wall spoke to his solicitor and told him he had been given alcohol. Majid asked the custody sergeant to breathalyse Wall and he was found to be over the drink-drive limit.

Majid said that at the time Wall was interviewed – almost five hours before – he must have been “steaming”. “It’s frightening to think what his reading would have been at the time of the interview.”

The solicitor said: “Getting my client to admit things he hadn’t done in the hope it will improve crime figures takes policing back 25 years. It’s likely in his condition he’d have agreed to anything. This goes as a warning that such behaviour will not be tolerated.”

Wall’s mother, Angela Rosier, said: “I think it is disgusting, how can they keep their jobs? They’re definitely in the wrong career. Sean cannot believe how they are allowed to stay.

“I’m not leaving it like this, I am going to take this as far I can and am currently talking to my solicitor about further action.”

The incident took place in 2010. The Independent Police Complaints Commission investigated the case and submitted its evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service because the officers had supplied drink to a 17-year-old. The CPS decided not to prosecute.

The IPCC’s commissioner for Wales, Tom Davies, said: “These two officers dealing with Sean Wall have acted without integrity. It was right that they faced gross misconduct proceedings.

“When interviewing Sean the officers were obstructive in relation to his request for a solicitor. During one of the interviews in the police station Sean is heard on tape asking for a solicitor on no fewer than 17 occasions.

“The two police officers compounded this by providing alcohol to Sean even though he was below the age of 18. This was clearly not for any refreshment purpose and could be seen as a crude inducement for him to help clear up unsolved crimes.

“I am sure that members of the public will be as surprised as I am that police officers can purchase alcohol for somebody below the legal age and yet no offence was committed in law.”

South Wales police assistant chief constable, Nick Croft, said: “These officers have acted in a manner which clearly falls well below the standards expected of them by the communities of South Wales. Their conduct will undoubtedly cause concern to members of the public, to the police service and their police colleagues.”