Who is encouraging police zealotry against piffling anti-Muslim "hate" crimes? And can we fire them?

Fortunately - and quite out of character - the CPS has stepped in. This was  posted on the Metropolitan Police website an hour ago:

Matthew Doyle, 46 (30.12.69) of South Croydon was charged by police on Friday, 25 March, with an offence under Section 19 of the Public Order Act 1986.

Following discussion with the Crown Prosecution Service, Mr Doyle is no longer charged with the offence and will not be appearing at court.

Police may not make charging decisions on offences under Section 19 of the Public Order Act. 

There will be further consultation with CPS.

I bet there will! Whether Mr. Doyle acted like a bit of an idiot is neither here nor there (in my opinion, he did, and using the word "towelhead" in a tweet doesn't seem overly bright). The questions to be answered now are: why the police thought it was reasonable to waste their time on this piddling matter; why - having presumably established the facts - they concluded that the supposed "offence" warranted the arrest of Mr. Doyle; why Mr. Doyle was arrested on suspicion of "inciting racial hatred", when the women he had addressed a question to was a Muslim (not a racial category, last time I looked); and why the police charged him when (the Met's own website states) they apparently had no right to do so without first consulting the CPS?

But the most important question of all is surely the following: why are the police so darned eager to get involved in the sort of ridiculous politically correct bullshit guaranteed to drive 80% of the population mad, and which will only please the kind of offendotron who reads - or works for - the Guardian? Are they rewarded for this sort of zealotry? Do they get special commendations for notching up "hate crime" arrests? The Met's colleagues up in Rotherham seem to have been somewhat less eager to arrest paedophile gangs comprised of Muslim men of mainly Pakistani origin for raping up to 1400 children over a number of years. But a white PR bloke tweets about asking a Muslim woman her reaction to the Brussels bombings. and he's immediately charged with a crime?

In case you're wondering, the investigation into Mr. Doyle's tweet was conducted by the Croydon Police Community Safety Unit. I wonder exactly which community's safety they're mainly concerned with. Not the middle-class, professional, white one, evidently - it's fair game. (And does anyone seriously imagine that if the interrogator had been a Muslim man asking a white Christian woman how she felt about, say, the Siege of Jerusalem by Crusaders in 1099, that they'd have done anything about it - unless, of course, she'd given a lippy response, in which case she'd probably have been banged up right away.)

Mind you, the Met are simply stepping keeping in line with their colleagues on the continent, judging by the story about a Dutch yoga teacher getting a visit from no less than three police officers after tweeting that Muslim schoolchildren were celebrating the Brussels attacks. Ivar Mol had apparently received messages from colleagues in Antwerp and Brussels telling him about delightful little kiddywinkles applauding the slaughter. I'm not sure why this would be considered surprising: I vividly remember news reports on British television after 9/11 featuring Muslim schoolchildren here laughing at "all them yuppies" throwing themselves to their deaths from the Twin Towers. So what's new? The Dutch police afterwards claimed that they only visited Mol because they wanted to know whether it was true that there had been applause in classrooms (like they'd have done something about it). The Mayor of Breda later called the police visit "a terribly stupid action." Hard to disagree.

Who is asking the police to behave in this farcical, divisive fashion? Can we fire them? And is it really beyond the power of our Home Secretary - a supposedly right-wing Conservative one at that - to put a bloody stop to it?

Meanwhile, in Glasgow, a truly horrendous crime against a Muslim has resulted in the death of Asad Shah, a much-loved, community-minded newsagent. He was stabbed and kicked to death outside his shop four hours after tweeting the following:

The event was to have been a get-together on Google with Mr. Shah's Christian friends to discuss the meaning of Easter. Police say the attack was religiously motivated. A friend of Mr. Shah describes a bearded man wearing a long religious robe as the attacker. He stabbed Mr. Shah thirty times, then sat on his victim's chest afterwards, laughing. Police are questioning a 32-year old suspect. I'm sorry if this sounds overly sentimental, but the story (which can be read in today's Daily Mail) is a timely reminder (to me, at least) not to make glib, blanket assumptions about immigrants - and a reminder that there are are some wonderful people in this world.  I'm not a fan of easy gestures, but I hope that those of us attending mass on Sunday - the most important and joyous day in the Christian calendar - remember Mr. Shah during the service: he does sound like an extraordinarily decent, pious man.