Police probe dirty underpants as hate incident after England Euro loss

As every self-respecting football fan knows, nothing good comes of washing your dirty laundry in public after a disappointing defeat.

Take it on the chin, accentuate the positives, and keep the rows and recriminations in-house: such is the modern mantra.

So when England’s dream of winning a first major trophy since 1966 was derailed by Italy in an agonising penalty shootout at Wembley in the Euro 2020 final, fans in North Wales did exactly that.

In fact, they didn’t wash their dirty laundry at all, instead airing their disappointment by hanging unwashed underwear on a clothes line – in what was perceived by a female neighbour with an Italian surname as a hate crime.

‘Known offenders have hung a very large, soiled pair of underpants on their washing line,’ reads a somewhat surreal summary of the complaint by North Wales police. ‘They have been there for over two months.

‘The [injured party] believes that [they] are aimed at her because she has an Italian surname and it is in regards to the football.’

It is one of numerous non-crime hate incidents recorded under the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 as part of an initiative to gather information on cases 'clearly motivated by intentional hostility' that could significantly escalate.

Yet there is a growing feeling that the system is broken, with the public, free-speech campaigners and even Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions, questioning the usefulness of logging such incidents.

‘I had to look up what on Earth the term meant – I was puzzled by it,’ Parkinson, the country’s top prosecutor, told the Times Crime and Justice Commission earlier this week.

‘Even within the police service there has been some surprise at the level of non-crime hate incidents that have been investigated.’

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The 'hate incidents' probed by police, including a a tweet about identifying as a fish

The issue has been magnified in recent weeks after the Daily Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson became the focus of an investigation by Essex police over a deleted, year-old social media post.

The force confirmed on Thursday that, having considered the case, the Crown Prosecution Service would not be bringing charges against Pearson, who said she was ‘dumbfounded and upset’ after police told her they intended to record a non-crime hate incident against her.

While Essex Police countered that the investigation related to a potential criminal offence rather than a non-crime hate incident, leading politicians have been lining up to condemn the inquiry, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch among them.

‘Journalists should not be getting visits from the police for expressing opinions,’ Badenoch wrote on social media.

‘Non-crime hate incident reports have increased exponentially as they appear to be used beyond the original intentions of the legislation created over 20 years ago.

‘It’s time to look (yet again) at the guidelines and review whether the overall policy is still fit for purpose.’

That view is underscored by a string of press reports exposing accusations that appear to fall well short of the threshold for a non-crime hate incident, defined by College of Policing guidance as 'any non-crime incident which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice'.

Examples include a man in Bedfordshire who received a police record for ‘racial hatred after whistling the Bob the Builder theme tune at his neighbour, and an investigation by Wiltshire police into allegations from a person who claimed the length of their hair was mocked.

Another individual was reported to Norfolk police for calling a Welsh person a 'sheep sh****r', while a report in Humberside related to a man asking whether a woman's Chinese restaurant food came 'with bats'.