Anthony Stansfeld, the police commissioner for Thames Valley , has called for a review of hate crime laws
A leading police commissioner has revealed that hate crime regulations forced his officers to question an elderly woman for beeping her horn at another car.
Anthony Stansfeld, the police commissioner for Thames Valley, has called for a review of current rules after the elderly lady was quizzed under caution because the driver just happened to be black.
Speaking about the case, he said that the woman is a ‘pillar of society’ in his community and was left devastated after she had to be investigated on suspicion of a hate crime because she honked at the other car for ‘taking ages’ at the petrol station.
The commissioner covers the Thames Valley area which contains the counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.
Stansfeld revealed that, under current laws, detectives have to investigate anything that was ‘perceived’ to be a hate crime.
He added that this could lead to ‘huge injustices’.
He told the Times: ‘It was an absolute classic. An elderly couple turned up at a petrol station and there was a woman who had filled up with petrol in front of them.
‘She was taking ages fiddling around and the lady who was driving, who was in her seventies, peeped on the horn and out flew an Afro-Caribbean lady who screamed abuse at them, went into the kiosk and reported it as a hate crime.’
The police commissioner said that they were forced to investigate the elderly woman, who was ‘hugely upset’.
The woman even wrote to Stansfeld asking him if he had recorded the case as a crime.
The commissioner added: ‘She asked us to remove it but the law is such that once it’s on the books we cannot do so.’
As well as revealing the shocking incident, the commissioner lent his support to Sara Thornton, chairwoman of the National Police Chiefs’ Council.
Last week, Thornton called for a bigger focus on tackling burglaries and violent crimes rather than issues like misogyny and historical allegations against the dead.