Police officers from Surrey Police force arrested journalist Caroline Farrow after she was reported for allegedly posting a “grossly offensive message”. The officers seized Farrow’s electronic devices, questioned her at Guildford Police Station and released her under investigation. Reclaim the Net has the story.
Farrow has denied posting the messages, said that she was falsely accused of posting messages wrote by other people, and described the police’s actions as “absurd”.
“I haven’t sent any threatening or indecent messages,” Farrow tweeted. “I was shown posts from KiwiFarms written by other people. I suspect these are the grossly indecent and threatening messages.”
In a statement, Surrey Police said: “When we receive an allegation of a crime, in this instance one where a grossly offensive message is said to have been communicated, it is our job to assess it alongside any available evidence to identify if an offence has been committed. If it has, we gather further evidence and carry out an investigation to prove or disprove the allegation. That is exactly the process that is being followed in this case.”
According to Farrow, two police officers showed up at her home while she was preparing dinner and told her that they’d come to arrest her for “malicious comms”. Farrow said she asked the officers whether they had a warrant but they told her they don’t need one and one officer barged his way into her home.
Farrow claimed that all of her devices were seized by the police, including a Chromebook that she was using for work and an iPad that her 10-year-old daughter with autism uses for homeschooling and to store her Harry Potter audiobooks.
Farrow added that because her devices were charging in the parish offices where her husband works, which is a separate building to her house, the police also obtained permission to enter church premises.
“My husband didn’t want his parish office and workspace invaded by plod investigating whether his wife used insulting words on the internet,” Farrow tweeted. “He couldn’t actually believe what was unfolding.”
Farrow claimed that she was frisked, arrested and then held in cells for a few hours.
Farrow said the police sergeant told her that emailing people “malicious messages” was a crime and the police officers then clarified that she hadn’t emailed anyone but had “allegedly written some insulting messages on the internet.”
Sinister stuff.
Worth reading in full.
Stop Press: Watch Caroline tell GB News‘s Mark Steyn about what happened.
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Straight out of a 1980s cold war movie in which some Russian helping the west is arrested and eliniated on some trumped up charge.
Just a reminder that the totalitarian spirit is very present among us, and not just in the land of our “enemies”.
No comment from government. I would hope Ms Bravermann is demanding a full report. And promptly.
What a bloody disgrace. Democracy? Err, come again.
Plod – even less use than GP’s and as much a waste of taxpayer’s cash.
Mark Steyn is determined to make the Surrey Chief Constable famous.
The Surrey Chief Constable might become famous for being the first case brought against a public official under UK National Law under ECHR Article 13, which was ratified by the UK only as recently as 2022, IIRC, after lengthy objections dating back to the Blair era.
Wouldn’t you think that it would be politically astute for the Home Secretary to request a change in the Tory Party agenda to allow her to tell Surrey police what she thought. She wiould get a huge standing ovation, even from the numpties in the Tory Party.
Indeed.
However, assuming that Mrs farrow is charged, the police would issue a formal “no comment on active case” press release. Standing ovations are not law!
Plod is marginally more useful than a GP. You can usually get an immediate face-to-face appointment (even if only with a civilian clerical person) to try to report a crime. However, if the crime you are reporting is not on their politically-controlled list of “targeted crimes”, they will either refuse to record it, or will record it and immediately stamp it “No Further Action”. Furthermore, if the crime is reported as being committed by, or is subsequently found to have been committed by, a state-sector employee then you are likely to be threatened with arrest, on the basis of divulging material that was “government property”, or is subject to contempt of court (e.g. divulging what was said in a collapsed court case). Either way, the police take “no further action”. If you bring a private prosecution, the CPS will “legally adopt” the case and then immediately drop it as it would not be in the “public interest” to continue. Unless you have actually met this machinery in the UK, you may continue to believe that we all live in a wonderful benign democracy in which the police protect us from a rogue Government, or, in practice, from individual state sector employees who run amok in the delusional belief that they Eliminating Evil and Saving The Planet. However, I expect that Braverman would be evicted from Government if she tried to #DrainTheSwamp or withdraw from the ECHR, or tried merely to enforce the newly-ratified Article 13 thereof (regarding “official capacity”) and under which Farrow now appears to have a case.
Contempt of court? Oh, like those wretched
Family Courts
Incidentally, is there a potential solution to this under the current political system?
See the interview with the great Mark Steyn on GBNews.
Mrs Farrow was clearly still upset – rightly so – but she should learn to see that arrest as a badge of honour, not something to be ashamed about. I’m sure that’s the way Mark Steyn sees his suspension by Ofcom – and he hasn’t backed off a wit.
When was he suspended by OFCOM?
July, I think. Suspended pending an Ofcom investigation of ‘misleading statements’ to the effect that the Covid jab is killing and harming people. Where did he ever get that crazy idea?
There are plenty of misleading statements in medical journals
– don’t take my word for it, that’s according to the editor-in-chief of The Lancet, Richard Horton:
“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.”
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(15)60696-1/fulltext
and according to former British Medical Journal editor, Richard Smith:
“Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proved otherwise?”
https://richardswsmith.wordpress.com/2021/07/02/time-to-assume-that-health-research-is-fraudulent-until-proved-otherwise/
The BBC’s mission is to “inform, educate and entertain”, but Mark Steyn somehow superbly manages to “inform, educate and entertain” all at the same time, consistently, every show from start to finish.
He’s a truly brilliant satirist, on a par with the great Peter Cook, and I can’t think of anyone else I’d think that about.
It’s my favourite TV programme, I don’t just mean my favourite news and current affairs programme, but my favourite of all programmes on TV.
I would be very interested to know exactly what act and section defines the alleged offence, and if it actually exists, what powers of arrest, if any, are attached to it. Why didn’t she ask? People are too compliant in the face of authority – and she gave them her passwords too? Mad.
It doesn’t look like she filmed the whole thing, which would have been a boon. In any case, looks like she could be in for a big payout. Time to get a solicitor.
The police are an absolute disgrace at the moment.
The police admitted that they only arrested her in order to be able to search her phone etc. Sounds like a case of false arrest to me.
A fishing expedition. Guilty until they are out of luck finding any damning evidence. It’s a shame they can’t do that with real criminals.
I think there is an issue concerning entering a private property without a legitimate reason.
Some people in department plod are in deep dooh dooh because of this. Certainly the Chief Constable should be emptying his desk.
This is one of the most disturbing police acts since the Covid farce.
This needs to be addressed and the policy that allowed it struck off.
Short of threatening to kill someone, no one should be abused by the police like this.
Since when has ‘insult’ been a criminal act justifying such a harsh response? Surely, to be a criminal act, it has to be applicable across the board, not just to a single anonymous person whose feelings were hurt? This is police overreach by a long, long way. They must account for it, and be accountable for it.
Presumably your question will be partially answered if she is charged. It can’t be under the Online Safety Bill 285 as that hasn’t got Royal Assent yet.
PS: mischievous thought: could Surrey Police conceivably be trolling Suella Braverman, by making high-profile outrageous arrests in order to bring down Bill 285?
Perhaps it is indeed more about intimidation than any serious prospect of charging her.
But we don’t eben know if she did even that. Did the police investigate the posting to find out if it was an offence and who posted it.
Meanwhile, at the University of the West of England, Mark Sexton and others tried to get the police to close down a child vaccination centre. They provided evidence of harms caused and about to be cause. They offered a phone call with Dr Aseem Malhotra as further evidence. They reminded the police of their oath to protect the public.
The police did nothing whatsoever! Obvious crimes being perpetrated, and they ran away. They summoned help and those serving notice to the police were told to leave the site.
The police are supporting real crimes against the population and arresting people for passing comments. How can they sleep at night?
“You do realise that exposing the illegal things your government has been doing is illegal?” [internet memes, passim]
Of course, YouTube has closed the Mark Sexton video down! So it is now on Odyssey: https://odysee.com/@mike_austin_downs:a/Mark-Sexton-Vaccine-Centre-University-Of-West-England-Bristol—Tuesday-4th-October-2022:1
And meanwhile, somebody else in the same region served by this police force could have been experiencing a house burglary, and they could have caught the perpetrators red-handed if it wasn’t for police resources (in this case their time) being squandered policing harmless internet activity!
It makes no logical sense from the perspective that considers police forces’ main objective to be tackling real crime.
It would make sense if you take the hypothesis that the objective is to systematically subdue people into submission to a grand narrative that obliterates free speech and free thought to the extent that the state owns everything about you.
After all, anything written or posted online is totally incapable of inducing any direct harm to anyone – you can simply choose to look elsewhere. Words on a screen cannot reach out and throttle you, sexually explicit images cannot rape you. Given this, the only reason for this “clampdown” on “online harms” can be to purge dissenting information from the internet.
“When we receive an allegation of a crime…’
Except burglary, auto theft, mugging (if White), damage to public property if involves picture, portrait, statue, name of colonialist, imperialist, racist with tenuous connexion with slavery, or climate protest – for example.
We see you Plod. We see what you are, and it ain’t Dixon of Dock Green.
Could this be part of the explanation?
“Kiwi Farms has been breached; assume passwords and emails have been leaked.”
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/09/kiwi-farms-has-been-breached-assume-passwords-and-emails-have-been-leaked/
The perception broadcast out to the public from the government is that they’re not responsible for the police behaving like this. The Tories themselves are portrayed as victims and opposed to the communist thuggery being meted out by the police.
Tories: YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE. The “conservatives” have been government since 2010, and the rot has accelerated unabated in complete synchronism with the rest of the globalist WEF-guided world.
Most of us will have heard Suella Bravermen talking tough at the conference, saying she’s going to crack down on police misbehaviour (as if they’ve gone rogue) but let’s see. I give it a week or two before there’s another convenient crisis to distract the media before it’s all forgotten and business as usual.
Thank goodness this was picked up on, and well done to Mark Steyn for raising the issue. One of the worst abuses of police power recently, I felt so angry. If this is still happening at the next election, the government don’t deserve to be reelect for this alone.
My car got robbed about ten years ago. Plod didn’t give a fuck. Got the crime number from the spotty retard in uniform. Insurance company paid up. Life went on. I bought a new car. Still, what a crap reflection of society in general.
I can’t get the Keystone Cops out my mind. “Evenin all”
She and her husband (pastor) are obviously Christian.
You wouldn’t see this against another ‘faith’, ever.
It is a pattern in the UK to now prosecute believing Christians (NHS, schools, gov’t). You won’t see this pattern against other ‘faiths’ or cults.
LBGTQZ++is just another intolerant fascism, with the useless Plod as their Gestapo.
How low can the UK go?
How low can the UK go? Presumably to the point when people feel they have nothing left to lose and throw their lot in with centre Right challenger parties.
We’re with you Caroline. More power to you
Shout if you need help from these idiots.