The Date

Miller versus The College of Policing will take place at The Court of Appeal on 8th-10th March 2021. The hearing is likely to be virtual.

The Story So Far

It is a year since The High Court ruled that Humberside Constabulary had acted like the Gestapo, the Stasi and the Cheka when they visited my workplace to ‘check my thinking.’ If you recall, I had reposted a feminist lyric on Twitter that stated, in direct terms, that males do not possess a vagina. 

Humberside maintain that they acted as they did in order to comply with the Hate Crime Operational guidance published by The College of Policing. The College of Policing agreed. In a bizarre judgement, the High Court ruled that the Guidance is legal - although following it, apparently, is not. This is what we are challenging.

What Is The College of Policing?

The College of Policing is not, as the name may suggest, a training school for new recruits; it is the body which sets the guidance that police forces in England and Wales are expected to follow. In other words, it wields a huge amount of power over Chief Constables, who subsequently hold a huge amount of influence over us all. Police and Crimes Commissioners, whose job it is to protect us from out of control police, are entirely absent. It has been left to Fair Cop to hold the police to account.

When we took on The College of Policing, we imagined it was staffed by maybe 50 or so former senior police officers, offering advice and guidance to the next generation. In fact, it employs 650 staff and has an annual wage bill of £37 million. That’s £56,000 per person; the average copper gets under £30,000.

Here’s Something I Bet You Didn’t Know

The College of Policing is a private limited company, no different from Specsavers or JCB. But if Specsavers or JCB made annual losses of £40 million a year, we are confident that the government would not throw money at them to keep them afloat. And do you know who the single shareholder of The College of Policing is? You might like to ask Priti Patel.

Why We Are Fighting

In October 2020, The College doubled-down on its High Court win, extending the reach of the Hate Crime Operational Guidance into schools. This means that a 15 year old girl making a fuss about the presence of a penis in her changing room is at risk of having her name registered on a police hate data-base if a teacher, pupil, parent or anybody else is minded to lodge a complaint of transphobia.

And if you happen to state that  Eddie Izzard does not qualify as the UK’s greatest female comedian, you too are at risk. Since 2020, transvestites now have more protection than women. 

3 Minutes and 45 Seconds

Reporting to the police is easy, anonymous, and can be done on-line in the time it takes to boil an egg.  Once lodged, the record will remain for 6 years and may be revealed to a potential employer at the discretion of the Chief Constable.  The Guidance and the TrueVision Portal are gifts to the motivated activist and the malicious lunatic. My malicious lunatic goes by the name of Mrs B, and continues to harass anyone who challenges them. Mrs B has has been reporting people to the police since at least 2014. We would name them, but the police granted them anonymity. 

Over the past year, Fair Cop has supported an alarming number of female employees, many of whom are from the police service, who have been targeted by their colleagues for a range  non-crime hate incidents. Offences include insisting on the provision of single sex toilets and tweeting in support of Keira Bell.

At the moment, employers  have The College of Policing Hate Crime Guidance on their side. We have the chance to overturn that Guidance at The Court of Appeal.

What Is Hate?

By hate, the police do not mean the kind of deep rage and prejudice which, if left unchecked, is likely to spill over into criminal action. No. The police define hate as antagonism, unfriendliness and dislike. 

A healthy democracy needs to celebrate antagonism, not criminalise it. And unfriendliness and dislike are personal emotions which should not be the business of the police.  Plenty of people hate me - provided they don’t threaten, harass, or send me malicious communications, I fully support their right to do so. 

Please Donate

We are relying on fivers and tenners from a host of people across all political spectrums to do battle with a private company that is funded by the government to the tune of millions. Please give what you can, if you can, and let us put an end to this police state. We appreciate every penny. 

Harry. x

'We have never had a Gestapo, a Cheka or a Stasi in Great Britain' said Mister Justice Knowles, delivering his groundbreaking judgment in favour of Miller at The High Court on Valentine's Day. Humberside Constabulary not only lost but were utterly vanquished, being compared to not one, but three, of the worst policing regimes in modern history. 'We followed the Hate Crime Operational Guidance, issued by The College of Policing in 2014', they pleaded. The College of Policing agreed. Humberside had followed it to the letter. And yet, in so doing, they behaved like the Gestapo. 

Interesting. One might even say, bizarre, given that in the same judgment, The College of Policing Guidance was ruled to be not unlawful. In other words, the Guidance is lawful whilst following it is unlawful. It is this anomaly that we are seeking to put right by way of appeal at The Supreme Court. We lodged our petition, yesterday. 

Whilst the ruling entirely vindicates me with respect to the actions of Humberside - it turns out that tweeting 'Sheffield women know the difference between lads and lasses' is not a hate incident, after all - the Guidance in its current form remains open to illegal implementation and a breach of Human Rights.

Third party, subjective reporting remains. In a hate incident, no evidence of hate is required. Police MUST record, regardless of rationality. Hate Incidents MUST show an increase regardless of whether or not hate crime is on the decrease. And the definition of hate includes 'an aversion to' or 'a dislike of.' So, if you have an aversion to, say, dating a woman (sic) with a penis, then you are eligible.  Last month, PC Gul was teaching the staff of a bread making factory in Scunthorpe about precisely this: how to recognise and anonymously report hate. Imagine the horror.

The Guidance is a heckler's charter, a way for activists and political agitators or straight up trouble makers to demand that the police place an individual under undue stress on the basis of an imagined, or manufactured, slight.  To have that individual's details  recorded on a Crime-Non-Crime police database, which may then be disclosed in a pre-employment Enhanced DBS (criminal records) check. Short of a Judicial Review (about £150K), there is no possible redress. 

Such dark, para-justice is not worthy of respect in a democratic society. Fair Cop, together with The Free Speech Union, is fighting to have the legality of this hateful Guidance overturned as it is being handled and applied by a police force and a Crown Prosecution Service that marks you for life, on the malicious say so of a single person, irrespective of your innocence or guilt. As such, it is the very definition of a totalitarian state system. Think Gestapo, Stasi, Cheka. Thank you. We fight on.