Graham Linehan to Sue Metropolitan Police for Wrongful Arrest
Graham Linehan has announced he is planning to sue the Metropolitan Police for wrongful arrest and a breach of his free speech rights as Met Commissioner Mark Rowley says officers should not get involved in “toxic culture wars”. The Telegraph has more.
The police are in an âimpossible positionâ and need greater clarity from the law, Sir Mark Rowley has said following the arrest of Graham Linehan over gender-critical tweets.
Sir Mark, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said officers should not get involved in âtoxic culture warsâ and vowed to introduce âa more stringent triaging processâ to ensure that only the most serious cases were taken forward.
His comments came after Scotland Yard faced intense criticism over the arrest of the Father Ted creator, who was detained by five armed officers at Heathrow airport over tweets published in April.
The 57 year-old was told he was being arrested on suspicion of a public order offence and questioned for several hours before being bailed. On Wednesday, he announced that he was planning to sue the Met for wrongful arrest and a breach of his free speech rights.
On Wednesday, Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, opened the door to changing the law in response to the row surrounding Linehanâs arrest.
He told BBC Radio 4âs Today programme: âIf Parliament has layered more and more expectation on the police, diluted the focus and priorities of the public, that is something that we need to look at.
âIt is hard for the police sometimes because they have to apply the law as it is written, not the law as sometimes it was intended.â
In an earlier interview, Mr Streeting also told Sky News: âWe would rather see our police on the streets rather than policing tweets.â …
Lawyers acting for the comedy writer have said they are considering legal action on several grounds including the unlawfulness of the arrest, the unlawful restriction on his free speech by banning him from X as a condition of granting him bail, and alleged defamatory statements from the Met that he had been arrested for âinciting violenceâ.
Linehan said: âThis was a horrible glimpse of the dystopian clown show that Britain has become. The Free Speech Union will support me by providing lawyers to advise on a claim against the Met Police for wrongful arrest and wrongful imprisonment in the hope that no one else is treated like a terrorist for speaking their mind on social media.â
Lord Young of Acton, the director of the Free Speech Union, said: âWe come across a lot of cases of police overreach at the Free Speech Union, but this is the most egregious example yet. We need to send a message to the Metropolitan Police that they canât employ these heavy-handed Gestapo tactics with impunity.
âThe overzealous policing of social media posts by the British police has turned the UK into an international laughing stock. It needs to stop.â
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Zack Polanski, the Green Party’s new leader, has backed Linehan’s arrest, calling it “proportionate“.
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“they have to apply the law as it is written, not the law as sometimes it was intended”
What rot. They have unlimited resources to get it right. What was enacted was what they wanted.
What is Streeting suggesting? The Home Secretary determines when a law will be used and when not? I think that is exactly what he is proposing.
And the Met Commissioner? He is effectively admitting his force got this wrong. he is trhe boss so what responsibilkity has he taken? None. He implicitly suggests that somewhere down the line a check list needs to be updated to prevent his officers, his force (sorry, service) and the judiaical system from looking as daft as they each have become.
Somebody, somewhere, thought it was a good and effective use of five officers, to take them off anti-terrorism duty, which is after all why theyâre armed and at airports, and instead direct them to arrest a 57 year old man getting off a transatlantic flight.
Whoever that is, needs to come forward and explain themselves. The officers themselves will say the were only following orders, of course, but they should know that such an excuse carries no more weight today than it did at Nuremberg.
It’s hard to see how the general arrest conditions (PACE, introduced by Labour TB government) were met in the circumstances presented, regardless of whether the hapless officers sent on this fools errand had reasonable suspicion that an offence had been committed (that leg of a lawful arrest was probably met). I’m sure the MPS will pay up eventually but the constant leak in the media of information gleaned by disclsure will be damaging for the police and the government.
I thought PACE replaced Judges Rules in 1984.
Good luck.
It would be very good if the outcome wasn’t another “While we admit no wrongdoing, here’s some taxpayer dosh!” settlement aka someone paying Linehan to shut up using public money misappropriated for this purpose.
What a lot of people have not yet realized (but most of us on this forum have) is that the very purpose of hate crime legislation is to create infinitely elastic laws that can be used to intimidate anybody and censor free speech.
In this particular instance Graham Linehan will probably not be charged.
It doesnât matter.
The punishment is the process itself.
Most people will look at what he has been through and think: âDo I really want to be arrested, taken to a police station, get interviewed, etc? Do I want to then wait months for my case to be dropped (if it is dropped)?â
This is why they do it.
This is why they sent out five police officers. Not because this guy was dangerous – come on, look at him.
No. It was to send out a message, for you and me and everyone: this is what will happen to you if you voice incorrect opinions.
Police State. Evidenced during the Rona Scamdemic. Plod gleefully beating up protestors, but would not touch BLM or the anti-White Jihad.
Now they spend time trolling tweets? Meanwhile as I write this another white girl has just been raped by a Muslimopath and another 2 cars are stolen in London.
My guess would be that this was more of a standard procedure, ie, armed police officers at an airport told that they’d have to arrest a dangerous individual because of suspected terrorism offences. The standard procedure made absolutely no sense in the given case but if it’s the standard procedure for XY, the officers have to follow it nevertheless.
This means that someone intentionally misreported this in order to trigger this standard procedure. But it’s likely that nobody specifically sent 5 armed officiers to make a point. The system is just wide open to be gamed by interested parties who – like the ex-policeman Linehan mentioned in his text of yesterday – know how to press the right buttons.
My interpretation:
Somebody high enough in the police force, thoroughly aligned to the expectations of the political elite, knew what he was supposed to do.
He might not have been given a direct command, but just like the good communists who knew what the party expected from them, he sensed what he was supposed to do and sent out five armed police officers.
The police could have quietly asked Graham Linehan to come to the police station and a few questions, in relation to some accusations. That would have been perfectly sufficient. But no, that would not have created the publicity. The message would have not reached the plebs.
Standard procedure? Why did they have to arrest him at the airport? What was the urgency? The guy is not a dangerous criminal who was likely to abscond.
Absolutely correct. High profile person gets arrested and detained helps the State to keep us all in FEAR – just like the Scamdemic.
Absolutely.
If anyone really thinks the arrest emanated from the police alone God help them. Mind you I would imagine most just don’t think. Explains a lot.
Go against the State and you’re in trouble
I’d love to know precisely who pushed the button on this.
Indeed.
The fact that I, and no doubt many others, now jokingly trot out the line “Ooh, you can’t say/tweet/post that, you’ll have plod knocking on your door!” shows that free speech is being whittled away.
Many a true word etc…
Sir Mark Rowley said in the Daily Mail article:
“Most reasonable people would agree that genuine threats of physical violence against an identified person or group should be acted upon by officers. Such actions can and do have serious and violent real-world implications.”
So that applies to Third World Ethnic Labour councillor Ricky Jones, who was let off by blaming his “dyslexia”, which, as any dyslexic will tell you, makes them urge people to slit the throats of anyone with opposing political views. Not. :/
Rowley has to resign. It’s about time the people at the head of all the organisations – from university Vice Chancellors to Police Commissioners – took responsibility for what their institutions are doing.
So Linehan, an Irish citizen posts while in the USA, a tweet on a US platform & is then arrested when he arrives in London?
Does this mean, anyone arriving in the UK could be arrested for anything they may said or posted anywhere?
The problem with suing the police is that the taxpayer will compensate Graham. He should actually get compensation from the police officers who stole his rights and their management. Otherwise, they will never learn.
Surprisingly there’s no mention of the FSU crowdfunder for Glinner’s lawsuit.
https://freespeechunion.org/graham-linehan-fundraiser-s/
đ Glad you posted that! I was about to post the link myself because I was surprised it wasnât mentioned here. I donated yesterday and see itâs jumped from 14% funded to 47% funded overnight â which is great, but more people need to know about it. Go, Glinner.
72% when I donated this afternoon.
The little secret is that the new generation of police are more woke than anyone, and will interpret the laws in that direction as much as they can.
The police in this country are not generally armed, only specialist squads are.
Why was Linehan arrested by armed police?
Did they think he was armed?
Arrested at Heathrow coming off a plane when it is virtually impossible to smuggle a gun onto a plane these days.
I think the reason was to project maximum intimidation to him and the general public
âIt is hard for the police sometimes because they have to apply the law as it is written, not the law as sometimes it was intended.â, yet what is written seems to be capable of very wide interpretation.
âThe police are in an âimpossible positionâ and need greater clarity from the law, Sir Mark Rowley has saidâ The senior command structure have put themselves in an âimpossible positionâ. All the way through the absurd and heavy handed actions to restrict free-speech, it has not been junior officers ordering arrests on the flimsiest grounds, often only to see its victims released from bail because at that time, the extreme twisting and bending of existing law could hardly justify the ridiculous police response. Mind you both recent governments fixed that problem by passing vague ill-defined legislation, which when coupled with the dreadful catch-all of ânon-crime hate incidentsâ (NCHIs) t. Senior Police Officers, goaded by the deeply politicised Policing Collage refused to desist from the overuse of NCHIs even when told to by two Home Secretaries and the courts themselves.he police seem to have powers of arrest exceeding that of the notorious âarrest on suspicion of committing an unspecified offence, or âsus actâ which led to the Police & Criminal Evidence Act curtailing groundless detentions. Coming from a Police Commander who appeared to have a complete fit of the vapours, when Home Secretary Suella Braverman, herself Home told him to get… Read more »