Ex-police officer seeks to take legal action over ‘secret criminal record’
Harry Miller is seeking permission to take a case against the Home Secretary and the Chief Constable of Lincolnshire Police Force after he was deemed to have stalked a trans woman and former police officer
A former police officer is taking legal action against the Government and a police force over the recording of hate crimes, claiming he was given a “secret criminal record” without a proper investigation.
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Harry Miller is seeking permission to take a case against the Home Secretary and the Chief Constable of Lincolnshire Police Force after he was deemed to have stalked trans woman and former police officer, Lynsay Watson.
Mr Miller, from Lincolnshire, said he was “stunned” and “appalled” to find out last year that he had a hate crime logged against him a year previously.
Mr Miller, who describes himself as a gender-critical campaigner, said it was related to his posts on social media site X, formerly Twitter, in late 2023 when he issued a statement following Ms Watson’s dismissal from a separate police force.
Ms Watson was a police constable with Leicestershire Police but was dismissed for gross misconduct in October 2023 over “derogatory and abusive tweets” about Mr Miller.
Following her dismissal, a post from his Fair Cop campaign account, welcomed the sacking and said there was a “culture within policing that demonises those of us who do not subscribe to the politics of gender”.
Mr Miller said, while he had at one point in 2024 been questioned in relation to the Online Safety Act, he had not been investigated to his knowledge about a hate crime.
He said he was not approached, questioned or investigated by the Lincolnshire force “in any way for this offence”.
He said: “They simply decided that I was guilty and gave me a criminal record. The fact that my accuser is a former police officer who was sacked for gross misconduct appears to have passed them by.”
He said the hate crime recorded against his name would show up for employers if they did an enhanced DBS check, giving him a “shadow or secret criminal record”.
He said the police force’s “argument is that I presented no credible evidence to suggest the offence had not taken place” but that this was “a straw man, given they never asked me about it”.
Hate crimes are investigated under the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 where an offender has demonstrated hostility based on race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity.
James Gardner, of Conrathe Gardner law firm which is representing Mr Miller, said: “People assume that they are innocent until proven guilty – but that’s not how the Home Office crime recording rules work.
“It’s absurd – and terrifying – that members of the public can have serious crimes recorded against them without any police investigation. Why has the Home Secretary chosen to defend this sinister system?”
Lincolnshire Police declined to comment.
The Home Office has been contacted for comment.
In 2021, Mr Miller won a Court of Appeal challenge over police guidance on “hate incidents” after claiming it unlawfully interfered with the right to freedom of expression.
He had been visited at work by an officer from Humberside Police in January 2019 after a member of the public complained about his allegedly “transphobic” tweets and the force recorded the complaint as a “non-crime hate incident”.
Mr Miller challenged Humberside Police and a High Court judge ruled the force’s actions were a “disproportionate interference” with Mr Miller’s right to freedom of expression.
While his initial challenge to the College of Police’s guidance on recording such incidents was dismissed, the Court of Appeal later found the guidance also breached his freedom of expression rights.