Bedfordshire Police Officers cited a man whistling the "Bob The Builder" theme tune at his neighbour, calling it a non-crime hate incident, the Daily Mail reports. The record will remain on file for six years and could be disclosed to prospective employers.
Back in 2014, a Rotherham couple were asked to get off a bus and called racists for singing the Peppa Pig theme tune to their 15-month-old autistic daughter.
The Hate Crime Operational Guidelines were adopted in 2014. 10,840 non-crime hate incidents were recorded in 2020, bringing the total in the past five years to 120,000. At the same time, Freedom of Information requests sent to 43 police forces in England and Wales failed to identify a single crime that had been solved as a result.
Activists have repeatedly called for the so-called "Orwellian" system to be scrapped, saying that a police record could jeopardise a person’s career even if they were not charged with a crime.