A former constable has vowed to take his fight against the police’s professional body to the Supreme Court after a judge warned his former force against behaving like the Gestapo.
Harry Miller said he would continue his fight for freedom of expression after a landmark legal challenge against the College of Policing and Humberside police.
Mr Miller accused the police of being politicised, saying that they had allowed themselves to be driven by the pro-transgender lobby including groups such as Stonewall, Mermaids and Gendered Intelligence.
Mr Justice Julian Knowles said that the police’s actions towards Mr Miller, 55, “disproportionately interfered with his right of freedom of expression” after officers visited him at work over tweets he had posted about transgender people.
Read article: Judge criticises police response to ‘transphobic’ tweets
The former officer hails “a watershed moment for liberty” following a High Court ruling on Humberside Police’s actions.
A police force unlawfully interfered with a man’s right to freedom of expression by turning up at his place of work over his allegedly “transphobic” tweets, a judge has ruled.
Harry Miller, a 54-year-old former police officer and now docker from Humberside, founded campaign group Fair Cop following the action against him over his Twitter posts.
Read article: Harry Miller: Police unlawfully interfered with freedom of expression over ‘transphobic’ tweets
He fought the thoughtpolice, and he won.
Today is a good day for free speech in Britain. The High Court has ruled that it is unlawful for police officers to harass members of the public for expressing views on the internet that some people find offensive, but are otherwise entirely legal to express. That this even had to be clarified tells us something about how far we’ve fallen, and how sorely this ruling was needed.
Read article: We need more Harry Millers
Ex-cop’s ‘transphobic’ tweets deemed lawful after High Court battle | Metro News
Police probe into former officer Harry Miller’s tweets about transgender people was ‘disproportionate’, High Court judge rules | London Evening Standard
Former police officer’s ‘transphobic’ tweets ruled lawful by High Court – LBC
Transgender tweets were freedom of speech, British judge rules – Reuters
Cops who visited businessman, 54, at work over ‘transphobic’ tweets acted unlawfully – The Sun
Humberside Police ‘learning’ after officers quizzed Fair Cop founder Harry Miller over ‘transphobic’ tweet – Hull Live
Fair Cop founder Harry Miller in partial court win over transgender ‘hate incidents’ involving Humberside Police – Hull Live
Humberside Police condemned by judge for ‘Gestapo’ style investigation into transgender tweet – Grimsby Live
Harry Miller: ‘If the police come knocking say: ‘Miller v Humberside Police, b****r off” – Hull Live
Former policeman from Lincolnshire wins freedom of speech battle at High Court over alleged transphobic comments posted on Twitter – Lincolnshire Live
UK judge: Police probe of ‘transphobic’ tweets was unlawful – The Washington Post
UK judge: Police probe of ‘transphobic’ tweets was unlawful – ABC News
Police probe of ‘transphobic’ tweets was unlawful: U.K. judge | CTV News
Harry Miller: Police officer’s ‘transphobic’ tweets were lawful, court rules
Three groups of people have applied for judicial reviews
For some years now, schools, the nhs and the police have been accommodating the needs and concerns of transgender people. gids, Britain’s only gender identity clinic for children, based at the Tavistock nhs trust, has been making it easier for trans teenagers to transition medically. But now some critics of the moves are pushing back, claiming that gids is giving children puberty blockers too liberally, and that attempts by other bodies such as the police to combat transphobia are leading to an attack on free speech.
Three groups of people have recently applied for judicial reviews, the legal means to challenge public bodies. On January 22nd, a 23-year-old woman, Keira Bell (pictured), joined one of these lawsuits. She charges that gids is performing “experimental” treatment on children by giving puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to more than 1,000 children and teenagers, including herself, some as young as 11. She had a double mastectomy, and subsequently detransitioned.
Read article: A pushback against trans activism in Britain
A former constable at the centre of a landmark legal case over tweets that he sent about transgender people has revealed that he and his family have been threatened with rape and murder.
Harry Miller, 55, was visited last year by police from Humberside, his former force, and told that he would be recorded as having carried out a “hate incident” over a series of tweets about transgender people, including a limerick that he had retweeted which questioned whether transgender women were biological women.
Read article: Ex-officer in transgender tweet case says he received threats
A man involved in a landmark legal case relating to a “non-crime hate incident” says that officers began acting as “thought police” out of the best of intentions.
Harry Miller, 55, from Lincolnshire, was told by an officer a verse he had posted about transgender people on Twitter would be recorded as a “hate incident” under the College of Policing’s guidelines.
Speaking ahead of the judgment on the case, which is expected early next month, he said: “I am pro-police. I do not think that the people in the police force have looked at this and thought how can we become totalitarian?
Read article: Ex-cop accused over hate limerick on Twitter speaks out
Police forces are recording thousands of hate incidents even though they accept that they are not crimes.
More than 87,000 ‘non-crime hate incidents’ have been recorded by 27 forces in England and Wales over the past five years, when the national policing body introduced its Hate Crime Operational Guidelines.
The guidelines state that an incident – perceived to be motivated by hostility towards religion, race or transgender identity – must be recorded “irrespective of whether there is any evidence to identify the hate element” and can even show up on an individual’s DBS check, despite them not committing a crime.
Read article: Police forces record thousands of hate incidents each year even though they accept they are not crimes
By way of illustration he mentions the recent case of Harry Miller, the ex-policeman who was investigated by Humberside police for retweeting a poem deemed to be transphobic. Miller is currently challenging the police investigation in court. ‘The judge reminded the court that freedom of speech outweighs the right never to hear something you don’t like.’
Read article: Comedy in the era of Twitter outrage: An interview with Ricky Gervais
A tribunal upholds the firing of an employee who had tweeted that men cannot become women
Fair Cop, a pressure-group set up by Mr Miller and others concerned about the way police deal with so-called “non-crime hate incidents” and especially statements deemed to be transphobic, expressed outrage at the ruling in Ms Forstater’s case. It went on: “Shocking as this judgment is, we welcome the fact that it unmasks the true demands of the trans-rights movement: that everybody in society must either believe in the falsehood that humans can change sex; or, at the very least, self-censor so that they appear to believe in it.
Read article: In Britain, saying sex is immutable can be a sackable offence
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