This is insanity.
Some butt-hurt (no pun intended) adult gets a child arrested because he says an off-comment.
Our legal system is a joke.
🚨 Teenage Reform activist arrested after calling Tory councillor a “rent boy”
A 15-year-old schoolboy, Fraser, was woken by four police officers knocking at the door of his family home.
The previous day, Fraser, a committed Reform UK activist, had been campaigning for Nigel Farage in Clacton during the hastily called by-election.
But a handful of Facebook posts appear to have upset a Tory councillor on Wolverhampton City Council, who complained to the police.
In one post, Fraser criticised the councillor for wearing shorts and a T-shirt to a meeting. In another, after the councillor had worn a suit, Fraser remarked that he was thankfully not dressed like a “rent boy”.
West Midlands Police’s response was to send two police cars and four officers to the child’s home.
Fraser believes his arrest was politically motivated.
The police have revealed very little about why Fraser was arrested. In an email to his lawyer on 8 September, West Midlands Police wrote: “It is alleged that your client’s comments could be considered a hate crime offence…”
Officers searched Fraser in full view of his neighbours before placing him in a police car and taking him to the local station. There, he was searched a second time, put in a cell, and had his fingerprints, DNA and mugshot taken. His shoes were removed, and he was left alone in a “freezing cold cell” without his mother while he waited for a duty solicitor. Meanwhile, two officers searched his bedroom at home.
Celia Hibbert, Reform’s leader in Wolverhampton, contacted the Free Speech Union (FSU), which has taken up Fraser’s case and found him a lawyer. Fraser is considering suing West Midlands Police for wrongful arrest.
FSU Legal Officer Zahira Patel said:
“Four police officers arriving to arrest a 15-year-old boy over a political Facebook post is a shocking overreach. This is not an isolated overreaction. It fits a pattern we see again and again: politicians reporting online criticism to the police rather than answering it.
“For a child to be arrested at home, interrogated, stripped of his devices, left waiting weeks to learn his fate and investigated for a ‘hate crime’ is not proportionate policing of a minor. This investigation needs to end immediately.”
It is deeply Orwellian for an elected official to use the police to silence a child who mocked him.
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