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The Free Speech Union (FSU) has fought more than 7,000 cases since 2020 and, frankly, I thought I’d seen it all when it comes to the police overreacting to an ‘offensive’ remark. Surely, the Met dispatching five armed officers to arrest Graham Linehan when he got off a flight from America for a tweet is the absolute nadir? But no. We were in court last week defending a man who was being prosecuted for saying something verboten while driving his car. The only person who heard it was his four year-old son, yet he was charged with “threatening or abusive behaviour” with a racial aggravator.
The story begins in April last year, when our member – let’s call him Craig – was driving his son back to their home in Glasgow after a day out at an amusement park in Falkirk. At around 4pm, when he was exiting the M80, he was cut up by another vehicle, forcing him to swerve to avoid a collision. He got the impression the other driver was drunk and called the police from his car. In due course, both vehicles stopped and the police arrived. They declined to breathalyse anyone, but took our member’s dashcam footage to see if any laws had been broken.
A week later, the officers returned the footage and told him that an offence had indeed been committed – but by him, not the other driver. His ‘crime’ was muttering the words “smelly black bastard” under his breath seconds after almost being driven off the road. The windows were closed, so no one outside the vehicle could have heard him, and the other driver wasn’t looking in his direction so couldn’t have seen him say it. The only evidence against Craig was the dashcam footage he’d turned over to the police in the hope of seeing the dangerous driver brought to justice.....<<<Read More>>>...
