The Metropolitan Police declined to drop their investigation into Graham Linehan over tweets about trans issues and said the law used to detain him needs reviewing. The Met commissioner said officers should not be policing toxic culture-war debates, and that while any review takes place officers would investigate only more serious cases concerning online messages. The arrest at Heathrow of a man in his 50s for allegedly inciting violence was linked to posts on X and was made under the Public Order Act. The force said officers had reasonable grounds to believe an offence occurred and highlighted tensions between free speech and real-world risks, noting ambiguous cases force officers to record and pursue reported incidents.
I understand the concern caused by such incidents given differing perspectives on the balance between free speech and the risks of inciting violence in the real world. Most reasonable people would agree that genuine threats of physical violence against an identified person or group should be acted upon by officers. Such actions can and do have serious and violent real-world implications.
But when it comes to lesser cases, where there is ambiguity in terms of intent and harm, policing has been left between a rock and a hard place by successive governments who have given officers no choice but to record such incidents as crimes when they're reported. Then they are obliged to follow all lines of inquiry and take action as
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