It’s never ending, isn’t it? Always enemies of it, everywhere:
Miss Lewis was arrested outside Finsbury Park Tube station in north London in February 2020 after it was claimed she said that non-believers and gay people should be stabbed.
She was arrested under the Public Order Act for making homophobic and racist comments. On her arrival at custody, she handed over her mobile phone which had been recording.
In a statement to her trial at Highbury Magistrates Court last month, officer Stuart Day said that the video showed that one of the men who had accused her “very much sounds like he is trying to goad her into commenting on his sexuality. She does not however take the bait”.
The statement continued: “At no point do you hear her make homophobic or racial remarks against anyone… She at no point during the recording is calling for the stabbing or murder of any group based on their lack of religious beliefs.”
Incitement to – immediate – violence should indeed be a crime. But other than that and libel/slander speech needs to be free.
He notes that she repeatedly refers to people as sinners but adds: “I was satisfied that she does not use any homophobic or racial language during this time.”
Rather than having the case dropped, Miss Lewis was charged with a different public order offence of using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour to cause harassment, alarm or distress.
It was alleged that she had made a child cry and had been threatening when she told one man: “You are an advocate of Satan and I rebuke you in Jesus’ name”.
But District Judge Julia Newton ruled that there was no case to answer as although the words were disagreed with, they were not threatening or abusive. She said that there was no evidence she had caused the children to cry.
Homophobia, racism, making children cry, none of these things should even be part of the issue. Which is rather where the problem is – after that appalling police performance – isn’t it?
If I still lived in Britain, it would no longer concern me to read of police officers being injured or killed.
Enemy casualties are not my problem.
The police who decided to continue with the prosecution and the CPS moron who came up with the POA offence should be fired in an Ecksian fashion.
I can picture the scene. Bingo! The dumb bint has recorded her rant, we’ve got her bang to rights! (Later) er, we’ve listened to the recording and, ahem…
I wonder. If the recording didn’t exist, I suspect she would have been convicted on a PC’s say so.
If making a child cry is a criminal offence then the prisons are going to be swamped by parents who told their children they can’t have any more sweets.
Utter fuckwittery.
@philip
Of course she would because the police are a respectable institution and they would never lie. Lucky she recorded it.
Those who say “all coppers are bastards” are a lot closer to the truth than those who say “it’s just a few bad apples”.
Miss Lewis was arrested outside Finsbury Park Tube station in north London in February 2020 after it was claimed she said that non-believers and gay people should be stabbed.
Whoever – I’m assuming a gay, anti-Christian activist – made the claim that she threatened to stab people needs to be in the Dock. They need to feel some pushback.
Rather than having the case dropped, Miss Lewis was charged with a different public order offence of using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour to cause harassment, alarm or distress.
As Mark Steyn noted about his travails with the Canadian ‘ Human Rights Commission’: the process is the punishment.
The sad thing is that all Christian street preachers now use body cameras just because the police don’t know how to do their job properly. The number of videos on YouTube showing arrests of Christian preachers gives the impression that none of the police seem to understand human rights laws or public order offences.
“ gives the impression that none of the police seem to understand human rights laws or public order offences.”
Alternatively they do but politically driven senior officers are telling them to ignore them in the hope that it becomes the ‘new normal’ to the extent people start acting as if it is the law.
Process is the punishment and judges should call out vexatious prosecutions like this (a recording that refutes the ‘facts’ is pretty solid) or even be able to punish the prosecution, maybe a night or two in the cells for contempt. Fining them or letting people sue for wrongful arrest etc is pointless unless they are made personally liable as it’s all govt money
Its easy to imagine a conversation between the police and CPS with neither wanting to take responsibility and the ensuing flak that would come from dropping and deciding to let a judge deal with it.
She should institute a charge of Malicious Prosecution against the vile liars who prosecuted her.
Telling christians to “forgive their enemies” clashes here with a duty to protect the innocent who will later be persecuted by the same criminals if nothing is done to discourage them.