Back in the 1970s, there was a popular television police show over here, “The Sweeney,” which dealt with the experiences of a pair of cops working for the hard-as-nails division known as the “Flying Squad.” In Cockney rhyming slang, Sweeney Todd equaled Flying Squad.

To quote Wikipedia, “Most TV police dramas had shied away from showing officers as fallible. The series shows a more realistic side of police life … police officers in The Sweeney are ready and willing to meet violence with violence when dealing with London’s hardened criminals and are prone to cut corners and bend the law in pursuit of their prey, as long as it gets the right result.”

It was so fondly remembered that another television police show, “Life on Mars,” was created as an homage to it some three decades later. It also became wildly popular. In it, a modern policeman from 2006 wakes up after a car crash to find himself a policeman in 1973; the humor was in the plot that the police were nasty then, and are nice now. Only they’re not nice now; they’re just nasty to different people.

Now, instead of going after thugs for committing real crime, the British police increasingly go after law-abiding citizens for committing imaginary crimes. They picked the wrong victim, though, when they went after an American citizen resident in Britain. Deborah Anderson, a mother of two and a cancer patient, living alone, was visited by a policeman and told to apologize for her pro-Trump social media posts or face a police investigation.

In Ms. Anderson’s voice, from the moment she opens the door, we hear a magnificent echo down the centuries of righteous American indignation in the face of being denied freedom: 

“You can come in, but you’d better have a damn good reason for being here. I’m a member of the Free Speech Union and I’m an American citizen. I’ll have Elon Musk on you so quick your feet won’t touch.”

When the policeman somewhat sheepishly tells her that something she has written on Facebook has upset someone, she answers incredulously: “You’re here because somebody got upset? Is it against the law? Am I being arrested?” The policeman demurs, but asks that she “admit” to writing the comments and “apologize” to the anonymous cry-bully complainant.

“I’m not apologizing to anybody! Are there no houses that have been burgled recently? No rapes, no murders? Why aren’t you out there investigating those? I haven’t broken any laws, so you’re going to be wasting your time when you can be doing things that are more important. You should not be doing this. I’m a cancer patient — you can see that because I’m bald. The public knows what you guys are doing — we know what’s going on in this country. Next time, I’m gonna have a Free Speech Union lawyer with me.”

Sure enough, the Free Speech Union affirmed: “The FSU took on her case and, as a result, the police have now dropped their investigation. Thames Valley Police are responsible for guarding President Trump this week. What would he make of the fact that those same officers are visiting the homes of his supporters — including US citizens — and threatening them with arrest?” 

In the words of today’s youth, the politically correct constable found himself thoroughly “schooled” by Ms. Anderson. Yet not all of those currently finding themselves persecuted by the Tweet Police in this manner have her combativeness; Lucy Connelly co-operated with the law by pleading guilty to posting Bad Things on X and was promptly jailed for 10 months.

The FSU, created and led by the English writer Toby Young, defends beleaguered Brits when they get visits from the police for “Non-Crime Hate Incidents”; in an increasingly lawless land, our cops mysteriously seem to have all the time in the world to devote themselves to name-calling — which is what the vast majority of NCHIs entail — in 2024 going to a primary school to throw a scare into a 9-year-old who said another 9-year-old smelled. It sounds funny, but it’s anything but when your country is living through it. 

On X, a cynic said of the British police, referring back to “The Sweeney” era, “I preferred it when they were just bastards.” They still are. Once they were brave bastards, though, taking on the most violent of criminals; now they’re cowardly bastards, threatening cancer patients who dare state their support for their own president.

Meanwhile, the coppers have decided that no crime has been committed after English TikToker Charlotte Hayes called for conservatives to be murdered in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk: “Why is anyone condemning that? Kill them all.” It used to be a conceit of Brits to congratulate ourselves on the sedate sanity of our political scene compared to Americans.

Now, when being a conservative in Britain is to have the entire Establishment, including the police, ranged against one, America’s Bill of Rights — especially the First Amendment, the bit Prince Harry a few years back called “bonkers” — is looking awfully attractive.