Recorded and subject to investigation
Essex Police are angry that members of the public replied to their Facebook post about Trans Day of Remembrance and the threats it contained.
I take it the asterisks are meant to indicate “Update” (so why not just say “update”?). It all looks a bit like entrapment, to be honest. First they post some stupid catastrophizing bullshit about nonexistent violence against trans people, and then they tell us they’ve recorded all our responses and will go all police on our asses if they don’t like them. They’re going to “investigate” if they deem any of the comments “offensive.”
Yes, it looks very much like entrapment. And for what? Not agreeing that men are women if they say they are.
Asterisks are eye-catching, so the added note will be noticed and set off from the main text. It seems a normal thing to do.
The note does seem rather nefarious. Be afraid to express an opinion for fear of sparking a police investigation?
Yes, it’s deeply worrying. Police forces should not be political organisations and should not be able to threaten or punish people for disagreeing with their or the government’s or anyone else’s political views. UK police forces now have elected Police and Crime Commissioners who set the goals and priorities of their forces. These are, of course, for the most part aligned with the major political parties.The PCC for Essex is a Tory. We can presume, then, that his force’s actions represent the views of the current government and any investigations into replies are according to the government’s wishes. The clear priority this force is showing for a minority is approved by the government.
It’s all very frightening. How can policing be by consent when forces are allowed to prioritise among demographics (and remember that gender identity is not even a protected characteristic in the UK) according to their own whim or the political ambitions of their commissioners? I’m by no means an expert, but I understand that the College of Policing is supposed to independently set the standards for this sort of thing. Unfortunately, of course, it has been captured by Stonewall. And I expect they’re just guidelines anyway and who takes any notice of those, these days?
I don’t think we’re on our way to a police state quite yet, but then if you take small enough steps, it never does look like that, does it?
Maybe we have just found out where it is that David Paisley has gone to seek asylum.
As to asterisks, as we make our documents increasingly accessible to the disabled, we are told not to use bolding, italics, or underlining for emphasis. Emphasis should be done with asterisks…which only confuses sighted people because we are looking for the reference point.
That could be the only reason for the asterisks – emphasis based on being accessible to digital readers for the blind. In spite of the fact that Twitter has a lot of other characteristics that make it less accessible.
Sounds like the entire police force there needs different employment.