Police are wasting thousands of hours dealing with ‘hate incidents’ which are too trivial to be classed as crimes.
New figures reveal that 30 police forces dealt with 11,236 such incidents in 2015-16. Across the whole country, that works out at one every half hour.
Even if officers spent just 15 minutes following up each one, this would have taken up 3,750 hours of police time.
Police are wasting thousands of hours dealing with ‘hate incidents’ which are too trivial to be classed as crimes
The reports included someone alleging racism when a man’s dog barked at them, a mother angry after her children fell out with others playing in the street and a man who claimed a tennis umpire had made racist line-calls against his daughter.
There were also people offended by newspaper cartoons and even a woman in Wiltshire who got upset when someone on Facebook said she looked liked Peter Griffin from the TV cartoon Family Guy.
One in 20 incidents reported to police related to social media posts.
Hate incidents are defined as hostility based on a personal characteristic: race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or if a person is transgender.
They are upgraded to a ‘hate crime’ if a law is broken.
Crucially, the police must record a hate incident simply on the word of the alleged victim, then investigate by sending an officer to visit or making a phone call.
Critics say this is a waste of resources amid fears that Britain is in the grip of an epidemic of unpunished theft and violence.
Official figures show that police don’t catch four out of five robbers and burglars.
Official figures show that police don’t catch four out of five robbers and burglars
David Spencer of the Centre for Crime Prevention think-tank said: ‘While the fact that many people feel it is right to report ‘offensive’ social media posts to the police illustrates much that is wrong with modern society, it is even more worrying that our police seem willing to prioritise these cases over real crimes.
‘It is time for a return to common-sense policing where officers are out on the street protecting the public and preventing violent crimes, rather than sat in front of a computer screen deciding whether each tweet they are sent is offensive or not.’
Race-hate incidents reported in London alone included the barking dog, a student refused drinks in a bar and a bus driver who gave ‘a racist look’.
One woman reported a hate incident when a man stood ‘intimidatingly’ close to her because she was ‘a non-conforming- gender-specific lesbian in a wheelchair’.
A National Police Chiefs’ Council spokesman said: ‘By recording and reviewing reports of hate incidents, police forces play a vital role in helping prevent hate crime.
‘Officers can often use these reports as an indication of where and when tensions could escalate into violence. Victims and those feeling vulnerable should report any incident of hate crime to the police.’