Police ‘overwhelmed’ by thousands of hate crime complaints under new Scottish law
Police officers are “overwhelmed” by the deluge of hate crime complaints made during the first week of Scotland’s controversial new law.
There have been thousands of reports since the legislation kicked in on Monday – with no sign of the pace slowing down.
David Kennedy, general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation (SPF), which represents rank and file officers, said he had been told there were between 3,000 and 4,000 complaints in the first 48 hours.
“I’m told it’s not slowing down. There’s no let up. There’s still a lot coming in each day, especially with online forms,” he told i. “They are overwhelmed at the moment.”
Mr Kennedy said officers at Police Scotland’s Contact, Command and Control division have already taken overtime to sift through the enormous number of reports.
Other backroom administration staff have also been pulled in to help sort through the claims made by the public, he added.
The Scottish Government’s new law has established an offence for stirring up hatred over protected characteristics, including transgender identity, sexual orientation, religion, disability and age.
Many of the calls, texts and online forms submitted to the police are understood to be about SNP leader Humza Yousaf, and remarks he made in 2020 highlighting that many of the top jobs in Scotland were filled by white people.
Some reports are about remarks made by JK Rowling about transgender people on X. The author has vowed to keep “calling a man a man”.
Police Scotland bosses have made clear they will not be investigating Mr Yousaf’s speech on institutional racism, or Ms Rowling’s recent tweets.
Mr Yousaf, the First Minister, has insisted that the new law protects freedom of expression, which is one of the main concerns for critics. He said that the freedom to criticise, and even offend, “exists and should be treasured”.
Yet police chiefs fear the misperception that any remarks found offensive on social media can constitute a hate crime will see the cascade of complaints continue. Mr Yousaf has called on people to refrain from making “vexatious” complaints.
“There is a hope it will calm down somewhat,” said Mr Kennedy. “But the nature of the law and where reports are coming from – rows on X and social media – mean Police Scotland have to get ready for a substantial number of complaints.”
He claimed the online training officers received on the law took only two hours and was “inadequate”. He also claimed it had not been made clear enough which kind of attempts to stir up hated would merit investigation.
“There is a danger of a big backlog [of complaints] building up. That would create a need for a new team to look at it – people trained to understand the law. But police haven’t been given any more money. We are 1,000 officers down on where we want to be.”
There are also concerns that investigating hate crime could take frontline officers away from probing reports of shoplifting, burglary and other incidents.
“If a hate crime report needs investigation, then officers would have to go out in a car and speak to people and take statements. That means there’s less time to do other things,” said Mr Kennedy.
Scottish Labour has said it would not repeal the law, but would change it to include specific protections for women. Sex is not one of the protected characteristics, though the SNP has vowed to introduce a new bill designed to tackle misogyny.
Leading Scottish advocate Tony Lenehan KC told i the deluge of hate crime reports would be “a disaster for police resources if it carries on at anything like this rate”.
The lawyer pointed to figures showing that the number of crimes in Scotland where hate was an aggravating factor has been largely stable over the past decade, standing at around 5,000 charges a year.
Before the new law, police and prosecutors could consider whether crimes were “aggravated by prejudice”. There were 5,738 charges containing at least one element of hate crime in 2022-23, which was 2 per cent fewer than the previous year.
“It doesn’t seem hate crime was on the increase in a way that justifies forcing through this bill,” said Mr Lenehan. “It makes you wonder what the point of this new law was. My concern was that it was more of a PR effort than an effort to improve criminal justice.”
As well as the “extraordinary drain” on police time, Mr Lenehan is concerned that “motivated complainers” may “push the police and the prosecution services towards court action”. He added: “I worry it will be hard to avoid an uptick in prosecutions.”
Susan Smith, director of For Women Scotland, a group which opposed the failed attempt to bring in gender self-identification north of the border, said the implementation of the new law was “a mess”.
“My worry is that some officers may still be more sympathetic to certain things and decide to take something forward and investigate. This could be hugely disruptively to people’s lives, even if they aren’t prosecuted.”
Ms Smith added: “There was too much [in the law] left open to interpretation. There wasn’t clear enough guidance for police. The training for the police has been dreadful. And the messaging from the Scottish Government and the police has been poor.”
However, Rebecca Crowther, chief executive of Equality Network in Scotland, says the new law will protect people against behaviour that “strays into something that is abusive, that could cause fear and alarm, and that also incites hatred”.
Adam Tomkins, professor of public law of University of Glasgow and a former Tory MSP, also believes the new law can work once the initial hysteria has died down.
“If we focus on what the act actually means, rather than on what intemperate voices on both the left and the right are falsely claiming it means, we might yet make a success of it,” he told The Herald.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said the new law “will help to tackle the harm caused by hatred and prejudice”. They insisted that the legislation “does not prevent people expressing controversial, challenging or offensive views”.
Police Scotland declined to comment on the estimated hate crime report figures.
