Who are calling racist, you Scotch . . .Cabbie Ian Lonsdale got into a small altercation with a driver from a rival firm, who was upset because he had been excluded from the rank at Chelmsford railway station.
Words were exchanged but Ian, who is treasurer of the local licensed taxi drivers’ association, thought no more of it.
That is, until a couple of weeks later when he was woken at midnight by a knock on the front door at his home in Braintree, Essex.
Three police officers were standing there. They said they had come to arrest him under Section 4 of the Public Order Act on suspicion of making racist comments designed to cause ‘alarm or distress’.
Over zealous policing: We are becoming hyper sensitive of anything that could be seen as 'racism'
Ian thought it must be some kind of joke. But they were deadly serious.
The other driver had made an official complaint to the police, accusing Ian of calling him a ‘Scotch ****’.
He was duly arrested and taken to Braintree police station to be interviewed. For once, common-sense kicked in. The station sergeant refused to take Ian into custody and said he could return at a later date to make a voluntary statement.
Subsequently, he was told that no further action would be taken.
But this has naturally left 36-year-old Ian wondering why the police had nothing better to do than arrest him in the middle of the night on an absurd charge of ‘racism’. And why did it take three of them? He was happy to give them a statement. Did they think he would resist arrest?
Ian doesn’t deny calling the driver a ‘Scotch so-and-so’ — or words to that effect. He may also have invited him to take the high road back to Scotland.
But he maintains that since the other bloke instigated the argument, was hurling abuse and poking him in the chest at the time, he was acting under duress and entitled to call him whatever he wanted.
Ian, who has been driving taxis for 15 years, could have counter-charged the other driver with assault. But he couldn’t be bothered to make a fuss about nothing.
This might easily have gone the other way. Ian could have been taken to court and ended up with a conviction, which would have cost him his taxi licence and his livelihood.
In many respects, this story doesn’t surprise me. The police have lost touch with reality in their hyper-sensitive pursuit of any alleged ‘racism’.
So thank goodness for an old-fashioned station sergeant with a proper sense of proportion.
Nevertheless, sending three coppers to arrest a man at midnight for calling an aggressor a ‘Scotch ****’ is not just an over-reaction, it’s insane.
Mind how you go
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