A good UK police officer

The Telegraph reports:

A short video went viral last weekend that briefly restored my faith in British policing. It showed a female Metropolitan Police officer standing alone in Whitechapel, surrounded by a crowd of angry Muslim men, calmly defending the right of a Christian street preacher to preach.

“In this country, we have freedom of speech,” she told them. The officer then added: “I understand that you guys don’t want to hear it, so I would just recommend that you walk away and don’t listen to him. He’s not in your home.” This was met with incredulity by the men, who seemingly could not believe the officer wasn’t immediately placing the preacher in handcuffs.

Hoping to spur her into action, one of them pointed out they were in “a Muslim area”. Happily, this ridiculous argument did not cut the mustard with the unblinking officer. There is no such thing in law as a “Muslim area” into which Christian preachers are forbidden to trespass.

I don’t know the officer’s name – the Metropolitan Police have declined to comment – but she deserves a medal. What she demonstrated, under considerable pressure, was a good grasp of the law: that a person preaching peacefully in a public place is exercising a right protected by Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998, and that the feelings of offended bystanders, however loudly expressed, are irrelevant. Unfortunately, she is the exception rather than the rule.

Once upon a time, a UK police officer correctly understanding and applying the law around freedom of speech would have been unremarkable. But today, it is a rarity as more and more street preachers are arrested for saying something someone finds offensive.

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