The UK police having become a "morality police" is not an exaggeration

The United Kingdom has become very infamous in the past ten-or-so years for having started to police people's speech and expression of opinion, for reasons that literally nobody knows (nor have I ever heard where that policy is coming from. It appears to be kept under the wraps.)

It's very telling that, factually and without exaggeration, the UK incarcerates more people every single year for their expression of opinion online than Russia does. And by a quite large margin at that. Let that sink in for a moment. I believe that the UK broke the 10-thousand arrests per year landmark a couple of years ago, which is a staggering amount.

And all that while, at the same time, solving actual crimes, such as burglaries, thefts, assaults, vandalism, rape and so on, has plummeted. There are several cities in the country where the police solves less than 1% of all such crimes. Indeed: They literally arrest more people for their expression of opinion than for actual crimes such as theft and assault.

And they are not just arresting people who post terroristic threats or the like. They are arresting people for the most innocuous of comments, if the police deems it "offensive".

And, indeed, the UK police forces have literally become a "morality police", just like those in extremist Islamic countries.

And that's not an exaggeration or distortion. British cops are instructed to decide, based on their own personal judgment, whether to consider something "offensive" and thus give a warning or make an arrest. They are literally like the Judges in the Judge Dredd universe, who in that comic, to streamline the judicial process, have the powers of jury, judge and executioner, but in this case the UK cops are tasked and empowered to make their own personal judgment on whether something is "offensive" or not, and arrest people based on that.

This is different from normal policing work, which is based on law: Normally the duty of police officers is to enforce laws, actual real concrete laws that exist.

In this case, however, they are tasked on making their own personal subjective judgment on whether something someone has said is morally "offensive" or not. Not based on any laws, but based on personal judgment. They are literally the morality police, passing arbitrary judgment on people and arresting them if they personally think that it is immoral.

The UK police is a complete disgrace.