UK police data shows surprising items in hate incident records
Police forces across UK logged thousands of non-crime hate incidents including odd cases with doctors vicars and kids. New data shows how different forces handle these reports in their day-to-day work
Recent data from UK police shows weird-and-wonderful cases in non-crime hate records. Among them a Welsh person got called a sheep-related insult‚ and theres an odd comment about Chinese food (which shows how far these records can go)
The info came from freedom-of-information requests to 45 forces showing how different groups got caught up in these reports:
- Medical staff and doctors
- Religious workers like vicars
- Bar-and-pub workers
- Kids in school
- News-writers and reporters
In Humberside a church leader became part of a hate-incident after talking about sin and being gay; while Norfolk police wrote down that sheep-related comment about Welsh folk. A bi-sexual personʼs doctor visit also made it to records — they said wrong diagnosis happened due to their orientation.
Even young ones got mixed up in this stuff: a 9-year-old got recorded for saying bad words to classmates. Allison Pearson a well-known news writer is now dealing with police about her social-media post from last fall.
Numbers show about 13k incidents got written down in past year ending this summer; Metropolitan Police alone noted 5k cases since mid-2023. Humberside Police had 212 hate-things in books this June with 7 people charged and 103 cases still open
Police say they look at each case careful-like: Humberside takes what they call a common-sense path while Norfolk cops admit its tricky but theyre learning new rules. These records are meant for real hostile stuff that might get worse — thats what the govt says anyway
