Man lands ‘racial hatred’ police record for ‘whistling Bob The Builder theme’ at neighbour
19 July 2021, 07:44 | Updated: 19 July 2021, 10:53
A Bedfordshire man has ended up with a police record for "racial hatred" after whistling the theme tune to Bob The Builder at his neighbour.
Police in Bedfordshire recorded the interaction as a non-crime hate incident, which will remain on their file for six years.
The record could be disclosed to potential employers, impacting the man’s chances of getting a new job.
If a potential employer asks for a Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) check, the non-crime hate incident could show up.
The police should not be keeping records on innocent people
The Daily Mail reported few other details about the ‘crime’ are known, but it is just one of the bizarre cases unearthed by an investigation into the controversial practice of recording ‘hate incidents’ even if no law has been broken.
As a result of Hate Crime Guidelines, which took effect in 2014, police are obliged to record any incident a member of the public believes was motivated by hate, even if nothing criminal took place.
In 2020, 10,840 non-crime hate incidents were logged across the country, with 120,000 recorded since the new system was introduced.
The Express reported further examples citing a swimming teacher in West Yorkshire given a police record after a child’s mother claimed her son had been allowed to bang his head against the side of the pool ‘due to his ethnicity’, and a gay man who claimed he had been ripped off by a drug dealer because of his sexuality.
