Common sense policing

[-:Undertaker:-]

http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/...enda-1-4912432

Candidate branded ‘unfit’ over vow to remove hate crime from police agenda

Godfrey Bloom MEP

A CANDIDATE for police commissioner has provoked anger by saying he would want to abolish the concept of hate crime. Godfrey Bloom MEP, UKIP candidate for Humberside Police, said: “If I’m elected commissioner I will not give policing priorities to any cultural or social minority who claim they should have preference.

“What I believe is that my police force, if I’m elected, will react with alacrity to any crime, especially violent crime, regardless of colour, creed or sexual orientation. I will not give priority to one group or another.

“If a white person bashes a brown person over the head, is that a hate crime? I don’t know. If someone bashes me over the head and they don’t say ‘I hate middle-class bald ********’, is that a hate crime? The whole thing is absurd. It has to stop and I will stop it.”

Mr Bloom, the UKIP MEP for Yorkshire, has been backed by his party.

A spokesman said: “The party’s position is somebody thumping somebody is a crime, whoever the victim is. We don’t understand why, if it’s an Asian hitting a black person and the black person says ‘It’s because I’m black’ the Asian should get a double tariff.

“We are all equal before the law and that has been a proud boast of British justice for centuries.”

He added: “We are not saying to a bunch of white hoodlums, ‘Go and beat up somebody black or Asian’, but what we are uncomfortable with is the victim of a crime saying you did it because of this reason and that suddenly doubles the tariff. To us that doesn’t seem fair.”

Hate crime is defined as any criminal offence which is perceived to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a personal characteristic. A total of 48,127 hate crimes were recorded in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2010.

Human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said: “Godfrey Bloom doesn’t understand hate crimes and is therefore unfit to be a police commissioner. Hate crimes are not about preferencing anyone. They are a recognition that some crimes are motivated by hatred of particular groups of people, including black, Jewish, Muslim, disabled and gay people.”

A Home Office spokesman said: “Hate crime is unacceptable in a civilised society and we owe it to victims and their families to carry on the fight against hatred.”

Godfrey Bloom is one of the only serving British politicians who I have any respect for and he's spot on again, just thought i'd share as people rarely use any thought when analysing crime and justice policy - thinking that the reason why a person is attacked is somehow worse than the crime itself. When people like Peter Tatchell seek to place people into groups, it just creates anger and hatred between 'groups' - let's treat people as individuals with equal rights.

Godfrey Bloom is absolutely right - we must all be equal before the law, and it is therefore important, for example, that punishment should be baed on the nature and extent of injuries caused and not the race either of the attacker or the victim.

If we are all equal under the law, as has always supposed to be the case in this country, why should a punishment be twice as harsh for a white man attacking a black man rather than a white man? Or of course vice versa?

And why on earth should the question of whether the penalty be doubled depend on whether any one person, even a bystander not even involved, perceives the attack to be racist? Might that complain itself not be perceived to be racially motivated? And why should a defendant's punishment depend on whether or not there was someone present wishing to make that complaint? It's all politically correct nonsense on stilts

Common sense policing, it would be nice to see him beat Lord Prescott (former Deputy PM) in the election.

Thoughts?