On being “hateful”

What I’ve learned since discovering my name in a record of “criminal harassment”

As I wrote in my previous post, in mid-August I found out about a crime report made last year concerning my referring to Freda Wallace, a fetishistic trans-identifying man, as a man and a fetishist. The complainant was disgraced ex-cop Lynsay Watson — fired for gross misconduct in 2023 and added to the “black list” of people who can never be hired by any police force again.

Here’s an interview I did with Josh Howie of Free Speech Nation last Sunday that sets out what happened in more detail than I was able to in the interview I shared in my previous post. I’ve also written it up for the Critic magazine’s October issue, which has just gone to press, and said a bit about how we got to a place where something so crazy can happen — and more importantly how we can get back out of that place. I’ll share that once it’s online.

Here’s what I learned about the UK’s Orwellian shadow crime-recording procedures, whereby you can be added to the Police National Database as guilty of a crime without ever being charged, tried or convicted — indeed without ever being told.

The whole thing started after the official inquiry into the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence. In the Macpherson Report it was recommended that police start recording racist incidents that fell short of crimes — things like racist graffiti or name-calling — the idea being to spot patterns such as times and places where these things happened and hopefully to improve policing so that actual crime could be averted. I think it’s fair to say at this stage that this hope proved false — there is no evidence whatsoever that this sort of reporting has ever done any good. A very good recent article by Scottish policy analysts MurrayBlackburnMackenzie makes this point.

Despite this lack of evidence, such recording became more common and other personal characteristics were added to race. By 2020, when trans identity was added, it was the fifth “monitored strand” — also known as “protected characteristics”, although confusingly they are different from those in the UK’s Equality Act. The five are race, religion, disability, sexual orientation and transgender identity.

Over time, the way such “incidents” should be treated by police became formalised and more consistent between forces. In 2014 national guidance became embedded in all police forces that prioritised the perception of the “victim” above all else — in essence, if a person made a complaint about what someone said about a person with one of the monitored characteristics, or indeed about something someone said that the complainant claimed concerned all people with a monitored characteristic — then that complaint had to be recorded completely credulously. A “hate incident” was defined as “any non-crime incident which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice”. It didn’t matter if there was no evidence that the speech was motivated by hostility or prejudice, or indeed if such an interpretation was completely ridiculous.

In 2021 this guidance was successfully challenged in the High Court by my friend Harry Miller, who had posted a few tweets about trans-identifying men in general an in particular that were reported as “transphobic” and ended up being recorded as a non-crime hate incident. To give a sense of how ludicrous this was, one of Harry’s tweets simply said: “I was assigned mammal at birth, but my orientation is fish. Don't mis-species me.”

The High Court judgment said that the guidance had a “chilling effect” and unlawfully infringed on Harry’s freedom of speech. In 2023 it was replaced with a new version that placed more weight on whether it was reasonable to interpret the incident as motivated by “hostility or prejudice” and stating repeatedly that officers should use their “common sense”. And yet despite these revisions, I was still recorded as having committed a “hate crime” — not merely a non-crime hate incident, like Harry. I’ve devoted a lot of time over the past couple of weeks trying to work out how this happened.

In what follows, I’ve relied on both the official guidance on recording hate crimes/incidents and also the documents I’ve received regarding the original crime report: the response from my home police force to Watson’s application for judicial review of its decision not to prosecute me, which I’ve been sent as an “interested party” in that litigation; and the results of my own subject access request (SAR) to my home police force.

1. In a few tweets, pretty restrained considering the provocation, I called Freda Wallace — a trans-identifying man — a man, and referred to him as a pervert and fetishist — factual descriptions given the things that he said in the event at which he and I were on a panel together.

2. A different trans-identifying man, Lynsay Watson, complained about this. I don’t know the exact words of his crime report, but think it likely from what I have seen that he included a reference to “hostility” (this is a condition for something to be considered “hateful”) and probably also “prejudice” (also relevant for the definition of a “hate crime” — if something is merely “prejudiced” but not “hateful” it can at most be a non-crime hate incident but not a “hate crime”).

3. He claimed he was making the report on behalf of Wallace because Wallace is disabled. This is relevant because a disabled person is categorised as “vulnerable” and that lowers the bar for what counts as an incident that needs to be recorded.

4. The police phoned Wallace, who said that he was “greatly distressed” and also claimed that, though he couldn’t prove it, he thought that I was behind abusive phone-calls he claimed to have received on his personal phone and claimed were also made to his workplace. According to him, I had encouraged my X followers to do this.

5. My name, X handle and rough location were provided in the original crime report. The report was transferred from the force to which it was made — Greater Manchester Police (GMP); I know that Watson uses an address there for the purpose of making such reports — to my home force. (It’s worth noting that although I and several other people have separately reported Watson for what we regard as criminal harassment and malicious communications against us, GMP say that he doesn’t live at the address they have for him and that they can’t find him for interview. They have transferred these crime reports to Lincolnshire Police, who say he doesn’t live on their patch either. The two forces are doing nothing to investigate the crimes or try to find him, instead merely playing ping-pong with the crime reports with each other.)

6. According to the statutory guidance on reporting, all of this had to be written down without any questioning about whether it was true or even plausible. An officer in my home force was assigned to investigate. He quickly decided that the tweets were “unpleasant” (I think I was very restrained, considering!) but not criminal, and that the allegation that I had encouraged other people to make abusive phone-calls was incapable of being proved. He closed the crime report and passed that decision to a specialist in crime recording for review.

7. The specialist disagreed with it, saying that there was no reason to believe the abusive phone-calls hadn’t happened (note the reversal of the usual burden of proof!) and that the crime should be reopened and consideration given to recording a non-crime hate incident.

8. It was reopened by the first officer, who decided that if things had happened as Watson and Wallace described them, then I would have committed criminal harassment. But there was no way of establishing whether things had indeed happened that way, so there was no need to actually investigate anything. The incident was classified as an actual crime — criminal harassment — noted as “outcome 15” which means that a crime has been committed and the victim supports prosecution but that “evidential difficulties” mean it cannot be further investigated.

   (Note — why the hell not at least get in touch with me to find out whether any of this made sense! Amazingly, there is no expectation that before recording a report as a fact officers do anything at all to try to establish whether it is even plausible, or whether it might be motivated by malice on behalf of the person reporting against the person they’re reporting about. If they had got in touch I could have told them I have had Wallace blocked on Twitter/X for years and have never voluntarily interacted with him. In fact, when it was announced that we were both on the same panel he sent a DM to a friend with open DMs asking her to ask me to unblock him so he could talk to me privately about the event. I said No. Doesn’t it seem unlikely, therefore, that I was voluntarily contacting him by phone or encouraging others to do so?)

9. Instructed to regard absence of evidence as dispositive, the officer wrote the whole farrago down down as “crime: harassment” motivated by “transphobia” because of the “misgendering”. Two specific bits of the statutory guidance help understand why he did this.

   1. The first is one of the examples included to guide officers in their decision-making. Here is it, in full (emphasis added):

      On Twitter, an individual (the subject) expresses their belief that a person’s biological sex is more important than self-identified gender, and that biological sex should be prioritised when decisions are made about access to single-sex spaces. The tweet is not directed at any individual. However, another individual (the complainant) believes it to be transphobic and reports it to the police. The reviewing officer assesses that the perception of hostility is irrational - the expression of a view that conflicts with those of other people is not an indication of hostility without further evidence. The subject’s views are an example of a person exercising their freedom of expression to outline a personally held belief and a reasonable person would accept the discussion as a contribution to a lawful debate, even if they found it offensive or disagreed with it. An NCHI is not recorded, and the personal data of the subject is not recorded. The personal data of the subject (in the form of the subject’s twitter handle) that was initially recorded by the call taker is also removed from the policing system.

      The bits I’ve marked in bold strongly imply that if the tweet had been directed at an individual, whatever the content, the decision might well have been different.

   2. The second is this, in the context of a passage about establishing any previous names or identities of a trans complainant:

      As with any other victim, it will be necessary to undertake intelligence checks to determine whether a victim is a repeat victim, and for the purpose of disclosing any bad character to the CPS. Where possible these checks should be undertaken without asking the victim for details of their previous names. Where this information isn’t already known, it should be requested sensitively, explaining why the information is required, and if appropriate allowing the victim to write their previous names on the reverse of their statement rather than having to say them.

      This gives the strong impression that “deadnaming”, and by implication “misgendering”, are reasonably experienced by a trans person as extraordinarily harmful and should be at all costs avoided. (I have mentioned this passage to several people in recent days, and every single one has done a massive eye roll and said words to the effect of “for goodness’ sake.”)

10. Since the officer had no intention of actually investigating this “crime”, he put it through this weird shadow recording system whereby it’s sent to the Police National Database, there to live in perpetuity without anyone ever doing anything about it or trying to seek justice. If the claimed target didn’t come under one of the five “monitored strands”, he wouldn’t have done this, but would rather simply have kept the record as an allegation in case there were future similar allegations and it was needed in order to prove a “course of conduct” and to prosecute the perpetrator for harassment.

11. Next he had to decide whether to include my name with the record. The default for this shadow system is that you don’t — remember, it’s meant to be about doing something like monitoring the weather for “hateful incidents” floating about in the ether at concentrations that vary in space and time, or to put it less cynically, about spotting patterns in order to improve policing. But there are two exceptions.

    Again, quoting from the statutory guidance:

    Personal data may only be recorded where the recording authority deems that, alongside fulfilling the other criteria set out in this code, there is also a real risk of significant harm to individuals or groups with a particular characteristic(s) and/or a real risk that a future criminal offence may be committed against individuals or groups with a particular characteristic(s).

    Well, obviously I’m going to keep “misgendering” and “deadnaming”! And as the second passage from the guidance quoted above suggests, those should be regarded as causing “significant harm” to trans people. So, in line with the guidance, my name was retained alongside the record of the crime.

12. The final decision was whether I should be told this was happening. Again, if your name is kept with such a record the default is that you should be told. Quoting again from the guidance, however:

    The only exception is if there is a reasonable belief that such a notification could present a safeguarding risk to the complainant.

    I presume this clause is intended to take account of the risk that an abusive person might react with violence to hearing that they have been the subject of a police report. It’s been applied to me, once again, because in this framework sex-based words, when used about trans-identifying people, are regarded as causing “significant harm”.

To sum up: I find Freda Wallace genuinely scary in person, and deeply unpleasant online. I’ve had him blocked online for years, and when he turned up for the first day of last year’s Battle of Ideas in London I left as soon as I realised and didn’t return the following day. Lots of people have told me that the IEA panel was hilarious and a great service to the “Let Them Speak” agenda — basically, giving transactivists opportunities to show themselves up. But I actually hated it sitting for 90 minutes on a stage next to a big lump of a man dressed totally inappropriately, revealing his crotch area through his ripped fishnets, drinking and shooting his mouth off about fetish clubs and fucking TERFs’ husbands with his lesbian penis.

And yet not only have I been recorded as having committed criminal harassment against him; the specific decisions that were made to record my name and not inform me suggest that the police think I pose a safeguarding risk to him, and that it is plausible that my career of evil against him will continue.

Obviously I’m not going to let this stand.