Police officers will not record “frivolous” allegations of offensive speech in a shake-up of how crimes are logged by UK police forces.
Policing minister Chris Philp said officers are “not the thought police” and being rude or insulting is not a “police matter” as he announced British government plans coming into force next month which could see rows with neighbours and Twitter spats not logged as offences.
The reforms extend to so-called Home Office counting rules on how police record reported incidents, said to be in a bid to cut “unnecessary red tape” and free up officers to spend more time investigating crime.
As part of efforts to “clear away obstacles” to tackling crime, Mr Philp also said police officers should not be expected to deal with mental health cases and act as a “stop gap” for other agencies.
In a speech at the Law Society of England and Wales offices in central London on Thursday, he said: “We’re going to make clear that frivolous allegations of malicious communications should not be recorded as a criminal offence unless the criminal threshold has clearly been met.
“We don’t think that being rude or insulting is a police matter.
“Officers are not the thought police and where something is reported that doesn’t meet the criminal threshold, we don’t want that to be investigated or reported as a crime. We don’t want to waste police time on that kind of thing.”
Earlier, the minister admitted there is more that could be done to follow up on reported crimes but said the bureaucracy involved in recording certain incidents is “wasting” police time.
The move follows recommendations from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) which said a review of productivity estimated 443,000 officer hours are spent filling in forms and dealing with unnecessary administrative tasks, the equivalent to attending 220,000 domestic abuse incidents or 270,000 burglaries.
Police chiefs have welcomed the changes in the wake of previous concerns that the way offences are recorded could be inflating crime rates.