Got home from lunch with some friends right as 3 (three!) CID officers pulled up looking for me, over "malicious communications" I "may" have made. 5 hours later I was back home, having charmed them into asking for only a 2 sentence "I'm sorry for bullying you" letter as punishment. Not even a caution. Skip to the last section if you just want the analysis without story.
Let's be clear, I was extremely uncivil in my email (cw gross insults, mention of suicide)
Among my ranting - i.e these are the bits the cops actually brought up - I accused him of getting off on blowing up Palestinian kids to be so rabid in his support for Israel, compared him to Hitler and the Royal Family, and signed it with "Fuck you and kill yourself". I did not include any threats, actionable or not, veiled or not, or anything that could be interpreted as a threat to him - the closest I came was the phrase "kill yourself". The cops specifically stated that there was nothing threatening in the message.
I'm not trying to pretend what I said wasn't offensive, it was meant to be. Fuck him, he doesn't even have local support, nearly the entire Constituency Labour Party quit when the PLP forced his nomination on them, and since then he's unflinchingly supported Starmer's evil. Multiple people I know have sent very polite emails stating their objections to his support of Israel, and all received the same proforma zionist reply talking about Israel's "right to exist", so seeing as their politeness got ignored I aimed to make him just straight feel bad about the things he votes for, but that's all I did. I used some mean words, but it stayed well within the realm of just words.
Potentially I could have "no comment"-ed everything to make a big deal about it - I would 100% lose in court and get up to 2 years in prison and a fine, but it would drag things out in a way that attracted negative publicity for my MP and the police at an already quite volatile time - but instead, mainly for reasons that will stay between my solicitor and I, I was completely cooperative, making even more of a farce of the whole situation.
The cops arrived on edge and ready for something - a chase, a fight, an emotional breakdown - and instead got polite compliance from a charming and well spoken young man ("man"). They aren't used to people being friendly, helpful, and "open" while being arrested - they had to confer about putting cuffs on me before deciding there was no point. They certainly aren't used to receiving a cheerful admission of "guilt" and well thought out explanation of just what someone did to receive such abuse - once we finally got to the interview they were nodding along while I talked about evidence of the Israeli genocide being all over the news and the OSA doing nothing to protect women even before the technical implementation is considered.
With my solicitors help I didn't even actually have to say that I'd done anything wrong (not sure if it's the autism or what but I find it really difficult to use moral language to describe legality, even within the context of lying to authority figures), just that I could have used different phrasing (not a lie), I was sorry (definitely a lie) and wouldn't do it again (probably not a lie, but we'll see). She had to kick me under the table a few times to make sure I didn't get too close to certain subjects, but I was able to make it obvious that there was no crime here, just emotional language wrapping intelligent and legitimate complaints from someone who equally obviously wasn't a troublemaker, really a credit to their community, and the detectives ate it up. It was clear to them this was a complete nonissue of a case that just needs a light slap on the wrist to fulfil the requirements of the law, all tidied up just in time to clock out. They didn't even need to actually check my phone - I mean, I already admitted to sending the email, and I would hardly have given it over so willingly if there was something incriminating on there, would I?
The takeaway from the experience is that politicians are becoming scared of their constituents and are using the police to intimidate them, and it is obvious to everyone. I told my boss and he thought I was fucking with him. I told some libs at work and they started going on about 2004 honda accord jojo well. I told my dealer and he started laughing because I've been buying drugs from him for years. Even the coworker who's literally dating a cop was appalled. The unanimous reaction has been that while my email was maybe a little excessive, arresting me goes far beyond any reasonable response. Even the cops found it excessive - I wasn't joking about the two sentence apology and slap on the wrist, on releasing me the arresting officer literally said they were required to punish me because I'd admitted to breaching the 19whatever malicious communications act, but they were giving me the smallest possible punishment they had the power to give out.
I don't really know where else to go with this so TLDR:
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