China pressured London police to arrest Tiananmen protester, says watchdog

Re:China pressured London police to arrest Tiananmen protest... by DanBC on Monday July 01, 2019 @05:21AM (#20323691)

Judges tend to push back a bit if people are being arrested for merely swearing, especially if it's only at police officers.

Judges will say if you're in the job as a police officer that you need to be a bit robust about the language you hear.

They also say that we're not a nation of nuns and schoolgirls and so the everyday "man in the street" won't be aghast at the occasional swear word.

The public order act is problematic, and it does need to be reformed, but it's not as catastrophic as it appears.

We've just had a popular musician leading a chant of "Fuck off Boris" [Johnson], and that was broadcast on BBC tv. There are no arrests.

The other thing that causes real confusion on HN is that police and crown prosecution service have discretion about when to arrest and when to prosecute and they're too busy dealing with criminals to go around arresting people who've only sworn.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:China pressured London police to arrest Tiananmen protest... by pjc50 on Monday July 01, 2019 @05:29AM (#20323722)

In some ways the discretion makes it worse: it becomes a general purpose offense of "annoying a police officer". They're not enforcing that against EDL marches or the Orange Order, for example.

[ Parent | on HN ]