Britain’s most senior police officer has called for the government to change or clarify the law regarding free speech amid intense public debate over the arrest of an Irish comedian on suspicion of inciting violence against transgender people on social media.
Mark Rowley, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, which serves the London area, said his officers had been put in an “impossible position” in which laws were drawing them into “toxic culture-wars debates.”
In a statement on Wednesday, Mr. Rowley said he had suggested to the government changes that would enable police to “limit the resources we dedicate to tackling online statements to those cases creating real threats in the real world.”
Mr. Rowley was responding to criticism over the arrest of Graham Linehan, an Irish comedy writer and anti-transgender activist who was detained at Heathrow Airport on Monday. Mr. Linehan, who was a creator of the 1990s comedy series “Father Ted” and wrote and directed “The I.T. Crowd,” said he was arrested after landing at Heathrow, near London, on a flight from Arizona.
Writing on his blog, Mr. Linehan said he was taken into police custody, searched and interviewed in relation to three posts he made on X in April, including one that read: “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”
He said the post about punching transgender women was “not a call to violence” and that he had been “arrested for jokes.” He was released on bail later Monday.
Mr. Rowley defended the arrest in his statement, saying that the law “dictates that a threat to punch someone from a protected group could be an offense” and that “most reasonable people would agree that genuine threats of physical violence against an identified person or group should be acted upon by officers.”
In the 12 months that ended in March 2024, almost 4,800 hate crimes were recorded against transgender people, British police data shows, up from 2,800 hate crimes in the 12 months that ended in March 2021.
Mr. Linehan’s arrest has reignited a debate over the policing of speech in Britain, an issue the Trump administration has fiercely criticized.
Nigel Farage, the leader of the right-wing populist party Reform U.K., said he would bring up Mr. Linehan’s arrest on Wednesday during a visit to Washington, where he was to address the House Judiciary Committee in Congress. He wrote on X, “Free speech is under assault in Britain.” The schedule for the hearing said it would “examine European threats to American free speech and innovation.”
Vice President JD Vance has accused Britain and other European countries of constraining free speech. The U.S. State Department’s recent international human-rights reports have also focused on the issue while removing previous sections covering discrimination based on race, sexual orientation and gender identity.
In a statement that did not name Mr. Linehan, because of British privacy rules, the Metropolitan Police said that a man in his 50s had been “arrested on suspicion of inciting violence” after arriving at Heathrow and that the arrest was “in relation to posts on X.”
The police chief acknowledged concerns over the balance between free speech and the risk of inciting violence, saying that there was sometimes “ambiguity in terms of intent and harm” but that the police were required to investigate reports of crimes.
Mr. Rowley said that the Metropolitan Police, Britain’s largest force, would be changing the way it triaged reports “to make sure only the most serious cases are taken forward in future where there is a clear risk of harm or disorder.”
Mr. Linehan, 57, is set to go on trial on Thursday on separate charges of harassing an 18-year-old campaigner for transgender rights, accusations he denies.
Chris Philp, a senior Conservative Party lawmaker, criticized the arrest on Monday. “This is totally disproportionate,” he wrote on social media, “especially given police often don’t bother to follow up shoplifting, phone theft and car theft properly.”
India Willoughby, a transgender broadcaster and comedian, wrote on X that online posts could put people in danger and that free speech was being used as a “euphemism for bullying minorities.”
Several transgender advocacy groups in Britain have been contacted for comment.
Zack Polanski, the new leader of Britain’s Green Party, told the BBC that Mr. Linehan’s posts were “totally unacceptable” and said the arrest seemed “proportionate.”
Asked about Mr. Linehan’s arrest on Tuesday afternoon, the spokesman for Prime Minister Keir Starmer did not comment directly on the case, saying it was a matter for the police, but added that the government had been clear that its priorities for policing were serious violence and street crime.
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, went further on Wednesday morning when he told the BBC, “We want the police to focus on policing streets rather than tweets.”
He said the police were only enforcing “the laws that we as Parliament legislate for” but questioned whether recent arrests that had been criticized went beyond the “intended” use of that legislation.
“If over the years, with good intentions, Parliament has layered more and more expectation on police, and diluted the focus and priorities of the public, that’s obviously something we need to look at,” he said.
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