Vile Isn't the Same as Illegal: Who Decides What Counts as a Crime in Britain Now?

Let me get one thing out of the way before anybody starts typing angry emails.

Spitting on a memorial to a murdered man is disgusting.

Not edgy.

Not brave.

Not “just a bit of content”.

Disgusting.

So when I read that Essex Police had arrested a man after a video appeared to show him spitting on the statue of Sir David Amess, my first reaction was the same as most people's.

Good, I thought.

Go and have a word.

And then my second reaction kicked in, the one I picked up in a decade of regional newsrooms.

Hang on.

What's the actual crime here?

And who decided?

Because back in the late summer, four police officers in two cars turned up at a family home in the West Midlands to arrest a 15-year-old boy.

His offence?

Some Facebook posts mocking a local councillor's clothes.

Two stories.

One question.

Who decides what counts as a crime in Britain now?

What happened in Southend

Let's do the facts first, because facts matter more than feelings.

Sir David Amess was the Conservative MP for Southend West, and an MP since 1983.

On 15 October 2021 he was stabbed to death at his own constituency surgery, doing the most ordinary, decent part of the job: listening to the people he represented.

His killer, Ali Harbi Ali, a so-called Islamic State fanatic, was given a whole-life order.

Sir David was married with five children.

A statue in his memory was unveiled in 2024.

According to the BBC, a TikToker uploaded a video that appeared to show a man spitting on that statue.

Essex Police then arrested a man in his 30s in Westcliff-on-Sea on Friday 23 October.

He was questioned on suspicion of a public order offence and criminal damage, and at the time of the report he remained in custody.

Note the word “suspicion”.

He hasn't been charged with anything I've seen, let alone convicted.

He gets the same presumption of innocence as the rest of us, however grim the footage looks.

The family's spokesman, Radd Seiger, said they welcomed the police investigation and had been “deeply upset” by what they saw.

Then he said something I haven't stopped thinking about.

“David believed passionately in freedom of expression and the right to disagree.”

Read that again.

That's a grieving family, about the man who was murdered for doing his job, and they still make a point of standing up for free expression.

That's class.

That's British decency at its best.

Criminal damage is a real thing

Now, I'm not going to pretend this is a simple free speech case, because it isn't.

Spit on a statue and you're not just expressing an opinion.

You're doing something to somebody else's property and, in this case, a memorial a whole community cares about.

If the police think there's damage, that's a proper line of inquiry.

Physical things done to physical objects.

I understand that.

Most of us do.

The bit that makes me twitch is the other half: the “public order offence”.

Because that's the elastic band of British law.

It stretches to fit whatever upset somebody that week.

And that brings me to a schoolboy in the West Midlands.

Four officers for a Facebook post

According to the Free Speech Union, which has taken up his case, Will Fraser is 15 and a keen Reform UK activist.

The day before his arrest, he'd been in Clacton, campaigning for Nigel Farage.

The next morning he was woken by four West Midlands Police officers, who had come in two police cars, knocking at the door.

What had he done?

It appears a handful of Facebook posts had upset a Conservative councillor on Wolverhampton City Council, who reported them to the police.

In one post, he criticised the councillor for turning up to a council meeting in shorts and a T-shirt.

In another, noting the councillor had worn a suit on a different occasion, he commented that at least he wasn't dressed like a “rent boy”.

A third post showed the councillor with bunny ears and big teeth.

That's it.

That's the list.

Rude?

Yes.

Childish?

He's 15, so obviously.

Something I'd let my own kid post?

Probably not, and he'd get an earful from me.

But a crime?

What happened next

The Free Speech Union's account of the arrest is the part that made my stomach turn.

He was arrested in full view of the neighbours.

Searched.

Put in the back of a police car.

Searched again at the station.

Fingerprints.

DNA.

Mugshot.

Even his shoes taken off him.

Then, the union says, he was left alone in a “freezing cold cell” without his mother while he waited for a duty solicitor.

While he sat there, two officers searched his bedroom at home.

For a joke about a councillor's clothes.

In an email to his lawyers on 8 September, West Midlands Police wrote: “It is alleged that your client's comments could be considered a hate crime offence…”

Could be considered.

Not “are”.

Could be.

According to the union, two months on, he still hasn't been charged with anything.

He believes the arrest was politically motivated, and he's now considering suing West Midlands Police for wrongful arrest.

I can't tell you whether he's right about the politics.

I can tell you how it looks.

The union's legal officer, Zahira Patel, called it “a shocking overreach”, and said it fits “a pattern we see again and again: politicians reporting online criticism to the police rather than answering it.”

Honestly, that sentence is the whole story in a nutshell.

So who decides?

Here's what bothers me about putting these two cases side by side.

In Southend, a family who lost a husband and father in the worst way imaginable say they believe in the right to disagree.

In Wolverhampton, a councillor apparently took a teenager's jokes about his shorts to the police, and the police sent four officers.

One of those two people has every reason in the world to be furious.

It isn't the councillor.

And yet the system seems to move just as fast for hurt feelings as it does for an actual physical act against a memorial.

Faster, maybe, depending on who's complaining.

That's the problem.

When “offensive” and “criminal” get blurred, the deciding stops being about the law and starts being about who you are, who you upset, and how well connected they happen to be.

A politician gets their feelings hurt.

A child gets a cell.

When exactly did we all sign up for that?

What I actually want

I'll be fair about this, because I don't want to sound like I'm against the police.

I'm not.

I grew up respecting them, and the vast majority of officers would rather be catching burglars than reading Facebook.

So here's my position.

If you damage something, you answer for it.

Statue, bus shelter, war memorial, whatever.

That's not about speech.

That's about respect for things that belong to all of us.

My grandad would have had words with anyone who spat on a memorial, and he'd have been right.

If you say something nasty, rude, crude or stupid online, the answer is more speech.

Block them.

Mock them back.

Write a letter to the local paper.

Win the argument.

And if you're an elected politician?

Grow a thicker skin.

Being laughed at is part of the job.

It always has been.

Our ancestors drew kings with donkey ears and printed it.

That's not a hate crime.

That's Britain.

Police time is not a personal complaints service for people with a council badge.

And arresting children over jokes doesn't make anybody safer.

It just teaches a whole generation that the safest thing to do is keep your mouth shut.

Which is, I suspect, exactly the point for some people.

Disgusting, not dangerous

Sir David Amess spent nearly 40 years in Parliament listening to people who disagreed with him.

His family still defend their right to do it.

If the man in Southend did what the video appears to show, he deserves the contempt of every decent person in the country.

And if he caused damage, let the courts deal with it properly.

But “vile” and “illegal” are not the same word.

They never have been.

The moment we let the police decide that being offensive is a crime, we've handed them the power to decide whose voices are allowed.

One law.

One line.

One country.

For everybody.

Even the 15-year-old who thinks a councillor dresses badly.

And Remember:

Trust no Single Source

Trust Your Gut

and Stay Curious

Sally-Joe

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