Police Scotland, the new nationwide super-police service covering the whole nation, came into being in 2013 when the previous eight regional police authorities were amalgamated. Since then Police Scotland has gained an embarrassing reputation for inefficiency and authority overreach.
The reputation of Police Scotland is unlikely to be enhanced by its response to the latest terrorist incidents. In a ‘Message To Communities’ released following the London attack, Police Scotland seek to assure us that they are on top of things.
After referencing the Manchester and London attack, Assistant Chief Constable Steve Johnson gets down to business.
‘While we understand that the public will clearly be appalled by these events, I would urge each and every member of our communities to remain united against extremism and hate.
Police Scotland will not tolerate any attempts to target any community by any misguided individual or group and will work with all of our partners to resolve any issues and address any concerns. Should anyone become a victim of, or witness to, any hate crime, they should contact the police and report the incident.
Please be assured that Police Scotland continues to work with partners at home and abroad to counter the threat from terrorism and ensure the safety and wellbeing of all our communities.’
Before assuring the people of Scotland that Police Scotland are hard at work countering the threat of terrorism, the chief priority of the Assistant Chief Constable is to give a stern warning that Police Scotland will not tolerate any ‘hate crime’.
In the parlance of modern policing, driving a van into pedestrians and running amok with knives to murder and injure as many as possible does not come under the heading of ‘hate crime’. This is understandable as after so many incidents of people shouting Allahu Akbar and committing horrendous acts of violence the police, along with the media, admit that they are baffled, ‘we may never know what motivated him’ is a common response. It couldn’t possibly be because Islamists ‘hate’ infidels.
No, a ‘hate crime’ is someone who refers to an Arab looking Muslim as a ‘towel head’. A ‘hate crime’ is an old lady looking suspiciously at a burka clad woman. A ‘hate crime’ is when someone to relieve the tension, makes a joke about Islam. We are assured that Police Scotland ‘will not tolerate’ such acts.
After every Islamist atrocity we hear the same warning from politicians, media and police about the possible rise in ‘hate crime’. They are so out of touch with the people of Britain that they genuinely don’t realise how insulting to the British people they are. Our elites see us as knuckle-dragging bigots only one step removed from mounting a pogrom.
When we look at the British response to the continual atrocities mounted against Britain by Islamists, what is remarkable is that there have been so few physical attacks in retaliation. There have been no burka clad women being refused service at a supermarket, no hate preachers beaten up. No boycott of Muslim-owned businesses. Certainly no skinhead driving a white van into pedestrians in Tower Hamlets, London or Govanhill, Glasgow.
The ‘extremism and hate’ which concerns Police Scotland is clearly its worry that someone may call a Muslim a rude name. This will not be tolerated. Thus are the priorities of Police Scotland made clear.
It’s not only Scotland. Through a FOI request Hardeep Singh of the Network of Sikh Organisations obtained a breakdown from the Metropolitan Police of the ‘victims of Islamophobic hate crime’ for last year.
There were 1227 recorded Islamophobic attacks. Of supposed victims 912 were actual Muslims, the rest were an assortment of religions and none. How come so many victims of anti-Muslim hatred weren’t Muslims? The answer lies in the way hate crime is defined. The Met say: ‘An Islamophobic Offence is any offence which is perceived as Islamophobic by the victim or any other person, that is intended to impact upon those known or perceived to be Muslim.’ From this it is clear that the police don’t want actual facts.
Incredibly the guidance continues: ‘The victim does not have to justify or provide evidence of their belief, and police officers or staff should not directly challenge this perception. Evidence of the hostility is not required for an incident or crime to be recorded as a hate crime or hate incident.’
So whether or not an incident is actually a ‘hate crime’ doesn’t depend upon any old fashioned objective test, hard evidence is so ‘yesterday’ in today’s policing.
At the end of last year, Policy Exchange think-tank published Unsettled Belonging, a report on attitudes among British Muslims. Amongst its many interesting findings was that when asked about harassment on grounds of race, ethnicity or religion, only 6-7 per cent of British Muslims said it was a ‘big problem’, 14 per cent said it was a “slight problem” and a whopping 77 per cent on race/ethnicity and 79 per cent on religion said it was no problem at all.
The authors found this ‘somewhat surprising, given that there was a great deal of discussion in our focus groups about fears over personal security linked to anti-Muslim bigotry and harassment’. This may be less surprising when we consider that the report also records a much greater concern about anti-Muslim harassment among the general population than among British Muslims.
Might it be that British Muslims believe they are under greater attack from the general population than they actually are largely because our politicians and media, in their relentless pursuit of a multicultural agenda, continually tell them that this is a problem, and that our evidencephobic police go along with the narrative?
(Image: Dave Collier)
