THE head of Police Scotland has said that there is “no doubt” those who shared misinformation about Scotland’s hate crime legislation caused a “frenzy" when it was first introduced.

The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act came into force at the beginning of April and was met with criticism from a number of high-profile figures, including Harry Potter author JK Rowling.

Musk responded to a Twitter/X post from right-wing influencer Ian Miles Cheong who had claimed that anybody “who makes fun of or misgender trans people, make racial jokes or criticisms of certain religions, or criticise migrants can be prosecuted,” saying it was “an example of why it is important to preserve freedom of speech”.

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The National previously spoke with two top law academics at Scottish universities who debunked a number of viral posts spreading misinformation about the legislation.

Speaking to LBC, Police Scotland’s Chief Constable Jo Farrell said: “So firstly, policing is used to adopting, translating and implementing new legislation so this is not new to us.

"But you quite rightly highlight where people thought it was you know appropriate to almost create this fear that suddenly policing was going to crack down on free speech and that is not something Police Scotland would do.

“We’re a human rights-based organisation and we’re really, really clear, officers are really, really clear you know the right to free speech is something that we all support and see as a huge benefit in a civilised society.”

Following the first week of the legislation being implemented, Police Scotland revealed that a total of 7152 online reports of alleged hate crimes had been made, which led to reports of 240 hate crimes being recorded.

Farrell continued: “In the early weeks following the introduction, there (was) lots of online reporting, most of it anonymous and most of it reporting things that had already been on social media and clearly a willingness by some to make a point depending on your view about the legislation.”

She added that this created a “frenzy” and that “in those first weeks, we were then dealing with the impact of that”.

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“Now we’ve probably reverted back to steady state and actually what you see is an increase in the number of crimes and some of those are in those new areas where there’s a protected characteristic,” she added.

Farrell also made the point that the new law “modernised what already existed” but that “people sought to exploit it”.