At last week’s annual free speech event, hosted by Baroness Jenkins in the Cholmondeley Room and Terrace at the House of Lords, the formidable Kate Harris unveiled the LGB Alliance Human Lie Detector, whose job it is to sniff out male genitals presented by the public sector as vaginas. It’s a target rich environment, according to a letter written to the Cabinet Secretary, in which it is warned that government policy remains at risk by civil service fifth columnists whose devotion to gender ideology trumps the archaic notion of parliamentary democracy. From the underpinning lie that gender identity is as fundamentally human as a set of working lungs,  there flows an effluent upon which floats a steady stream of bureaucratic turds, disguised as equality and diversity. Kate’s human sniffer dogs will have a field day. 

Speaking of lies, Fair Cop must confess to having a recent dalliance with the dark side, although our sin involved the more subtle art of prevarication where a half truth is told in the hope of causing a misdirection.

The set up to our ruse was simple

The set up to our ruse was simple. We mocked up a tweet that was never sent and screenshot it alongside a Gif of Stalin. We then reported ourselves via the True Vision website and measured the time it took the police to respond. Within 48 hours, not one, but two police forces, joined the hunt, which might come as a surprise to those members of the public who have reported the bread and butter crimes of burglaries, thefts and robberies, and yet remain amongst the 94 per cent whose complaints are attended to, if at all, without any expectation of success.

To give the police a fighting chance of spotting our fakery, we embroidered our complaint with every thread of lunacy: terrorism, genocide, fascism, rifles, rotten teeth, multiple phobias  and the kind of hyperbole that Catherine Earnshaw might employ should Heathcliffe forget to call.

Other clues included a complainant who did not know their own address and, when pressed, vanished into the ether like the elusive Pimpernel; furthermore, the evidence did not exist where the complainant said it did, a fact easily established by a brief scan through our Timeline, to which, in the interest of fair play, the police had been directed. Without wishing to be cruel, a boy scout working toward a detective badge would have seen through the set-up. The professionals took the bait because they are myopically infected by a Chief Constable who orders Police Headquarters to burn bright with a trans luminescence at least twice a year.

The second part of our damnable scheme involved a Data Subject Access Request, whereby the degree to which Lincolnshire Police were susceptible to our manipulation would be disclosed.  Should a Non Crime Hate Incident appear on my record, they lose. Needless to say, they lost. 

To be clear, Miller versus The College of Policing did not make the recording of non crimes entirely unlawful, but rather reset the standard in order to weed out malicious complaints, and to recognise that Article 10 protects profane, satirical, contentious, ludicrous, insulting and even abusive speech from a malignant, non-crime record. 

The new high bar states that a non crime incident, motivated by hate, may only be recorded where the subject of the complaint presents a real risk of significant harm to individuals with a particular characteristic(s) and/or a real risk that a future criminal offence may be committed against individuals or groups with a particular characteristic(s).

Yet, in spite of statutory guidance, and numerous chiding letters from an irate Home Secretary warning His Majesty’s Constabularies to stop mimicking the Stasi, we breached the firewall during the time it took to drink a mug of tea. Whilst the new guidance is welcome, it has yet to gain any practical traction. How can it? For every piece of guidance urging caution, common sense and restraint, there are a thousand other missives reminding officers that hate is under-reported, and that the TQI+  community is particularly vulnerable. Barely a month goes by without officers being urged to light a candle, or raise a flag in solidarity with this most persecuted of groups. Dry legislation cannot compete with the drama.

Lincolnshire is by no means the worst. North Yorkshire Constabulary is in its fifth year of promoting the fiction that 1 in 12 transwomen are at risk of murder, which puts Kate Harris’s Human Lie Detector at risk of an aneurysm.   

Across the border in Leicestershire, police at a community engagement stall confirmed to our Secret Shopper that if the phrase “Women don’t have a penis” is overheard on a train, it should be reported immediately as a hate crime. They even provided a card with details to a hotline. Nottinghamshire police had the nerve to telephone a woman for refusing to accept her purchase in a carrier bag displaying the Progressive Pride Flag with the “Love is Love” motif. The rejection allegedly caused the shopkeeper “alarm, harassment and distress” and threatened to damage the reputation of the shop as a trans inclusive safe space.

Some will accuse us of wasting police time, but we don’t much care. Competent officers are unlikely to be tricked. Guidance is clear, and the police need to enforce it upon themselves with at least as much enthusiasm as they previously enforced the unlawful guidance upon members of the public whose political views they despised.  Until that happens, we will continue to recruit secret shoppers to the noble cause.

Meanwhile, to the Chief Constables of Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, we deliver the following assessment: Your Secret Shopper grade is: Unsatisfactory.