Policing: a knock on the door

By Richard North - September 26, 2025

At approximately 9pm yesterday, two police officers from North Yorkshire Constabulary arrived at Pete’s home to arrest him. Details initially were extremely sketchy as the only witness was his partner and she, at the time of recalling the events to me, was deeply shocked.

As far we knew then, Pete had been arrested on suspicion, for an alleged “hurty word” hate crime, arising from an unspecified post on X, at an unspecified time, with no details being given as to the nature of the alleged offence.

From my reading of PACE Code G, to which I have referred previously this, on the face of it, is an unnecessary arrest.

The statutory code is very clear in defining when an arrest is necessary for a suspected offence. All things being equal, for a crime of the nature for which Pete is being investigated, the normal and proper course of action would have been to invite him to the police station for an interview at a mutually convenient time, at which he would have been  entitled to have a solicitors of his choice present – with plenty of time to arrange for the right type of lawyer.

As we have seen all too often though, under the Starmer regime, the police are adopting heavy-handed tactics, with the Gestapo-style knock on the door in the late evening or early morning and an immediate arrest, with vague accusations of a “crime”, with no details specified.

Not uncommonly, these are fishing exercises, using shock tactics combined with promises of an early release. By the use of such tactics, the police aim to trick the suspect into self-incrimination. The more the suspects attempt to assert their rights, the greater the pressure that is applied, all directed at getting the suspect to talk.

The only and necessary response in such cases is to keep calm and say nothing. In any interview, the suspect is entitled to have a solicitor present and the best procedure is to respond with “no comment” to every question. This is actually more difficult than it sounds, as the police are skilled at framing provocative questions to trick the interviewee into a dialogue.

By making an arrest at 9pm, though, the police have picked a time when it is extremely difficult to get a solicitor and, for someone unprepared, already in custody, finding a suitable representative is more than a little problematical. Few normal people keep the contact details of a solicitor handy, on the off chance that they might be arrested, and an external person cannot appoint one for them.

The haunting thing here was the uncertainty for all concerned. Given the horrendous prison sentences handed down of late, the bad faith of politicised policing that is way out of control, and the malice underwriting the CPS prosecution policy, one feared the worst.

However, through a response from a reader of my Twitter post – which at the time of writing had over 100k views, we did manage to find a solicitor who made enquiries on our behalf. We were told that Pete was being interviewed, without legal representation.

In this event, though, there was some relief. Pete was released after questioning at about 1.30 this morning. The custody sergeant, to be fair, did offer to arrange to have him taken home but Pete declined, preferring to make his own way in a taxi.

Speaking to Pete, it seems he wasn’t even arrested for one of his own posts. Rather, it was the repost of a meme, most recently posted by him on 13 September – one that must have been posted and reposted hundreds of thousands of times by thousands of people, in this and all its variations.

But that was not even the offending occasion. The repost on which the police were acting was from the 5 August, no longer visible on Pete’s account but locked in the corporate memory of North Yorkshire’s finest. And it has now become so urgent that they had to drag him out of his house at 9pm, nearly two months later.

Nor is that the end of the ordeal for Pete. I heard from him that he “declined” legal representation because he was told that he would be held for much longer if he insisted that a solicitor be present. Now, he is out on conditional bail and has to surrender to the police on 21 December to find out whether CPS have decided to prosecute him.

So that is the state of our country now, where voicing an opinion on a terrorist organisation, a malign terrorist enclave and an alien politico-religious movement opens the way to the “knock on the door”, summary arrest and threat of prosecution which may yet have Pete in court defending himself, under threat of imprisonment.

This is not the country into which I was born and not one in which I want to live. Under this regime, virtually anyone can be summarily arrested and arbitrarily detained, a state of affairs which is truly intolerable.

Come what may, though, this is not the end of the matter. They may not have realised it, but they have picked on the wrong person. This is a fight for freedom, and the gloves are off.