A 9-year-old boy in the UK was put under investigation by the police after he playfully referred to one of his friends as a “retard” on the playground. Normal playground teasing has been investigated relentlessly ever since the UK passed a law defining what it calls non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs).

Under government guidance for the authorities, NCHI reports are only supposed to go on a person’s police record when an incident is motivated by hostile intentions. The naughty speech must also run the risk of escalation “causing significant harm or a criminal offence.”

Under the law, British cops are not supposed to be making police records whenever they go to a school and talk to a child about an NCHI. But that’s exactly what they’ve been doing. Between June 2023 and June 2024, The Times in London discovered that police in 45 of the UK’s 48 police precincts had recorded 13,200 NCHIs.

Many of the police records did involve children, including the 9-year-old who called his buddy on the playground a retard. Two underage high school girls had reports filed after teasing a classmate and saying she smelled “like fish.”

These NCHIs are permanent criminal records for the kids, by the way. The incidents will show up on a criminal background check in the UK. It will be harder for them to get into college or get a job when they have a “hate incident” on their record.

Critics are wondering whether this is a waste of police resources to send the cops after people for saying words, what with all the rampant illegal alien stabbing crimes going on in the UK. Public backlash could lead to the policy eventually being reversed, but for now, British parents should warn their kids to watch what they say on the playground.