Dear Petitioners, On the 21st July we submitted the petition letter to the police. On the 28th July we received the following reply from the Metropolitan Police officer to whom it was assigned: I am afraid I will not be taking action against Mr Farage and will not be treating this as a crime. The poster in question cannot be sensibly interpreted as incitement or any other offence in my view. I am afraid I cannot engage in academic debate about this point and will be directing our resources towards other hate crimes. This narrow response not only does not properly address the various issues which we have raised, but also makes clear his unwillingness to investigate evidence of wrongdoing. I responded to this with some reasonable questions, which can be found at the bottom of this update. Very disappointingly, despite repeated chasers, the Met Police officer involved has been unwilling to issue any further reply. As a result, I decided to undertake a little investigation myself, which has brought out some interesting findings.. Firstly, when Nigel Farage refused to apologise over the Breaking Point poster, he mentioned that these were just one in a series of posters. On the Leave.EU Facebook page I have now found a number of additional adverts that are arguably designed to incite racial and religious fear and intolerance. A selection of these images has been attached with this update. Secondly, I have conducted some limited research into whether this Nigel Farage and Leave.EU incitement, as well as garnering votes, may have ‘legitimised’ and encouraged more extreme reactions as a potentially direct causal factor in actual hate crimes. Obviously, I have neither the resources nor the powers of investigation that the police enjoy, and hence my investigation has been restricted to a limited trawl in online press, and whilst not conclusive there are certainly clear correlations: 1) On the 13th January Anne Bothwell left the following comment on Nigel Farage’s facebook page "I also believe the EU fear Britain leaving. I think it's now time not to care about being called a racist. It's only a weapon word to beat you down and keep you quiet with. I'm now very proud to be a racist." Nigel Farage left no response. She was later convicted of for sending threatening comments including suggesting all Muslims should be sent to gas chambers. (http://goo.gl/Nc7h7B) 2) After the referendum on the 25th June, Julian Williams shouted threats and racial insults to Polish football fans whilst holding a knife including “Go back to your own country. This is our country not your country” and “We are out of the EU now so tell them to **** off out of my country.” (http://goo.gl/koyu3E) 3) On the 29th June Mikaela Haze destroyed a sculpture of a hijab at the Royal Art College. Haze shouted, "Saudi Arabia go home." She also said, "We voted to take our country back again." (http://goo.gl/vKi5E4) Three social media sites PostRefRacism, Worrying Signs and iStreetWatch have also produced a report in which from over 500 crimes they state that: “Around a quarter of the incidents recorded in our database, specifically use the words ‘Go Home’ or ‘Leave’.” (http://goo.gl/0lLmzi) This week, the UN issued a report strongly criticising the EU referendum campaign, alleging that the "Divisive", "anti-immigrant" and “xenophobic rhetoric” by UK politicians during the EU referendum helped to fuel a spike in race hate crimes in the weeks before and after the vote. David Isaac, chairman of the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission, commented that “there are concerns that the acrimonious and divisive manner in which the referendum debate was conducted exacerbated worrying divisions in British society, and has been used by a minority to legitimise race hate”. (http://goo.gl/1mVHXt) The question is what can we petitioners do next? At the moment Nigel Farage is in the USA bolstering racist Donald Trump’s election chances whilst our concerns are being ignored. My opinion is that the next logical step is to refer the lack of proper MET Police response to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) - copying other relevant public offices – in the form of an open letter to ensure this is kept in the public eye. As always I am open to suggestions (ziddacism@gmail.com). I also think we need a lot more signatures on the petition. Please sign and share with your friends. Thanks, Zack Unanswered questions sent to the police: 1) Your reply only mentions the poster. Please can you confirm that you have considered all the information provided in petitioners’ letter of complaint? (in particular the quoted rhetoric by Nigel Farage) 2) Our understanding of the law is that “it is an offence to publish or distribute material that is intended to stir up racial hatred or which is likely to stir up racial hatred”. Is it your opinion that the campaigning rhetoric and advertising used by Nigel Farage and Leave.EU was not “likely to stir up racial hatred”? 3) Would the “Vicious Snake” video for example - apparently promoted by Leave.EU as a reason to vote Brexit – potentially meet that definition? http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/10/leave-eu-condemned-xenophobic-donald-trump-video 4) Given the petitioners are widespread nationally, including many in Scotland and Northern Ireland, could you clarify please whether your response is on behalf of the police at UK national level, or if it is purely a Metropolitan police view? 5) If not due to the referendum campaign; what do you believe to be the cause of recent increase in racist and religious hate crime?