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Britain - Woman charged with hate crime for quoting lyrics on Instagram

Mohonky

Member
Buckle up folks;

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-merseyside-43816921

A teenager who posted rap lyrics which included racist language on Instagram has been found guilty of sending a grossly offensive message.

Chelsea Russell, 19, from Liverpool posted the lyric from Snap Dogg's I'm Trippin' to pay tribute to a boy who died in a road crash, a court heard.

Russell argued it was not offensive, but was handed a community order.

Prosecutors said her sentence was increased from a fine to a community order "as it was a hate crime".

She was charged after Merseyside Police were anonymously sent a screenshot of her update.

'Grossly offensive'
Liverpool Justice Centre, sitting at Sefton Magistrates' Court, heard Russell posted the lyrics to her account after the death of a 13-year-old in a road accident in 2017, the Crown Prosecution Service said.

The words Russell used on her account contained a racial label which some people find extremely offensive.

The screenshot was passed to hate crime unit PC Dominique Walker, who told the court the term was "grossly offensive" to her as a black woman and to the general community.

The Liverpool Echo reported that Russell's defence had argued the usage of the word had changed over time and it had been used by superstar rapper Jay-Z "in front of thousands of people at the Glastonbury Festival".

Prosecutor Angela Conlan said Russell's defence also argued her profile "wasn't public", but it had been proved in court that anyone could access it and "see the offensive language".

She said prosecutors also "sourced case law that showed that posting the profile on her account constituted sending it and making it public".

Russell was found guilty of sending a grossly offensive message by a public communication.

She was given an eight-week community order, placed on an eight-week curfew and told to pay costs of £500 and an £85 victim surcharge.

Quoting others is now a legally enforceable crime.

My head is full of fuck just trying to work this out.
 
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wvnative

Member
Every day I wake up in a world even more unfathomable than yesterday's.

I don't know anything about justice systems outside the US, does she get a lawyer?
 

lvl8

Member
The UK police needs to arrest somebody since they don't want the public to think they're not doing their jobs for ignoring grooming gangs.
 

Mohonky

Member
Trump’s out of control amirite
Not sure what this has to do with Trump......


FloatingIslands sorry I dont, it was a rap song by Snap Dogg, I listened to one song and it's pretty obvious what the word in play was.

Begs the question, if Snap Dogg was to go on tour, could he even perform any of his tracks or does this only apply to non-African Americans using the term?

Either way, the slippery slope is getting steeper.
 

Guiberu

Member
I'm desperately trying to find a way to make noise about this.

Literally disgusting.

The "Officer" that was passed this case to review, had a sibling die an alleged "race hate" crime.

There is clearly bias in the way that the case was handled, and this poor girl has been unlawfully punished.

This needs to stop.
 
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LegendOfKage

Gold Member
I'm desperately trying to find a way to make noise about this.

Literally disgusting.

The "Officer" that was passed this case to review, had a sibling die an alleged "race hate" crime.

There is clearly bias in the way that the case was handled, and this poor girl has been unlawfully punished.

This needs to stop.

This sort of thing only empowers actual racists. I hope the vast majority of liberals can see that, and do not remain silent.
 
Between the UK trying to ban porn and that guy who went to jail for having a dog who gave a Nazi salute, this does not surprise me.
 

Mohonky

Member
Remember when the ultra PC future of the film Demolition Man derived its humour from how utterly absurd its society had become policing language, thought and physical contact seemed?

Yeop.......
 

It's Jeff

Banned
See, this is why "muh freeze peach" isn't a fucking joke. Your government has no business telling you what objectionable speech is. Particularly while quoting.

UK, I have a lot of love for your culture but you have some explaining to do this time...
 

Manus

Member
If the UK police were actually out on the streets policing real crime instead of this crap they may not have as many knife murders.
 

Airola

Member
...and that guy who went to jail for having a dog who gave a Nazi salute, this does not surprise me.

To read it that way it really makes this whole thing look like it's straight from some satirical comedy piece.

It's like a punch line to some comedy sketch.


Oh well, I wonder if quoting a Cannibal Corpse song would get you jail for life.

I mean, this MUST be morally far worse than whatever that Snap Dogg dude wrote:
Butchered At Birth

Birth is always painful
Decaying in the womb
Trapped within this body
A bleeding human tomb

Gutted bitch lies dead
Emptied of the child
Chewing on the cords
Its life line to this world
Afterbirth is flowing
The stench is overwhelming
My body, growing stronger
My pain turns to torture
Severing its bloodline
A butchered infant carcass

Meat from the unborn
The freshest kills
Chopped up children
Bathing in blood

Contorted and festering I rot in disgust
Re-generation of my body
Mother ripped apart
Smashing in her face
My knife cutting holes
Fucking her remains

Esophagus carved out
Crushing cartilage
Bile oozing from
Punctures in your liver

Ripping meat within
Chewing on intestine
Bladder spurting urine
Sight of defecation
Now grow infection
The child ripped to shreds
Drinking its excretions
Zombification

Ejaculation over mutilation
On the mother's body hacked into pieces

The sludges from my cock give her life once again
Sewing the remains of the child deep within her
Reborn through evil
My torture known throughout Hell
Heed to his calling
The demons await my next kill

Carnage is my fetish
Body cavities scraped of guts
Brains seeping from cracks
As my axe continues to hack

"Ejaculation over mutilation
On the mother's body hacked into pieces"


That's clear anti-woman rape culture right there!
 
Sounds like Britain needs a dose of 1776 at home.

Why not band together and physically block the court proceedings? They can only logistically arrest so many without causing a truly massive shitstorm.
 
Absolutely ridiculous. This country is becoming such a joke. Really feels like theres a class war element to some of this stuff.
 
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lifa-cobex

Member
I'm getting flash backs to Myspace where a good amount of my friends would have rap music just blare out on their page.
Would that be a crime now if your white?


So we can be sold this music,
We can listen to this music,
But we can't talk about this music in case an unrelated person hears and decides the context of which we mean them.

I have no idea who Snap Dogg is but this feels like were going full circle to the early 90's with Marilyn Manson.
But instead of going after Manson, were just going to make an example of the kids.


Sounds like PC Dominique Walker should be picking a fight with Snap Dogg instead of some teenager who is just basically advertising a song.

This is insane.
 
I don’t know what the hell is going on with the UK.

First the dog story, then this, and the story about the woman who was threatened that the police refused to do anything about.

People should be protesting this shit. If I lived in Britain I certainly would be.
 

Moneal

Member
I don’t know what the hell is going on with the UK.

First the dog story, then this, and the story about the woman who was threatened that the police refused to do anything about.

People should be protesting this shit. If I lived in Britain I certainly would be.

Didn't they threaten to arrest her instead?
 

Shifty

Member
Fuck this country. I don't want to live here anymore.

You know your local popo is a joke when the response to "there's a gang of drunk teenagers fucking up my lawn" is "have you asked them to stop?"
 
This reminds me of this video



What does the left have to do with anything here? The UK have a constitutional monarchy and their prime minister is a conservative.

Pretty clueless vid though. It's apparent that the 'arist' behind it has a dearth of ideas and creativity, he didn't have to make it that obvious by putting the hall of the mountain king as background music for the billionth time.
 

Moneal

Member
What does the left have to do with anything here? The UK have a constitutional monarchy and their prime minister is a conservative.

Pretty clueless vid though. It's apparent that the 'arist' behind it has a dearth of ideas and creativity, he didn't have to make it that obvious by putting the hall of the mountain king as background music for the billionth time.

The law was put in place in 2003, while Tony Blair was PM, from the Labour Party. It was introduced by Tessa Jowell also a member of the Labour Party.
 

Kadayi

Banned
This whole one rule for thee another for me language policing thing needs to go the way of the dinosaur. I'm honestly struggling to understand how posting music lyrics that presumably can be found via a google search on a personal account qualifies as instigating hate speech. Whoever this girl is she needs better legal support if they couldn't get this case dismissed.

Reading into it apparently, PC Dominique Walker is the sister of a guy who got murdered in a hate crime about 10 years back. I suspect her insistence to the court that the 'N word' is always offensive to her, regardless of who says it, is what swung the case, which is frankly farcical given its proclivity of use in reality: -

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/woman-who-posted-rap-lyrics-14543694

This is honestly us there with the Count Dankula conviction in terms of being a complete waste of public resources.
 
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DiscoJer

Member
I remember a few years ago there was a guy arrested for singing Kung Fu Fighting. I don't think he was held, though, much less convicted.
 

Ridcully

Member
This is what happens when you legislate against forms of speech.

And acid attacks and grooming rape gangs and terrorist attacks and mass FGM and .....

Austerity has hit the police as hard as it has every other part of the public sector. Unusual in that the Tories normally keep the jackboots paid when they're trampling on the rest of society, in case they need some skulls cracked. Times have changed.

Part of this is certainly a need to be seen to be doing something about the things that upset bourgie sensibilities, but may also have something to do with the fact policing anything else would take resources they don't actually have.
 
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