via: Free Speech Union

A 15-year-old boy was arrested by four police officers after he criticised the dress sense of a Conservative politician on Facebook. Fraser, who, alongside studying for his GCSEs, volunteers as a Reform activist, was arrested by West Midlands Police in August. His alleged crime? Posting a message criticising Cllr Simon Bennett, leader of the Conservative Group on Wolverhampton Council, for attending a meeting in shorts and a T-shirt.

When Bennett returned to wearing a suit and tie to the following meeting, Fraser wrote that he hadn’t shown up “dressed like a rent boy” on this occasion. Days later, Fraser, who lives with his single mother on a council estate in Walsall, was hauled from his bedroom by four police officers who arrested him at around 8am on suspicion of a hate crime.

Fraser says he had no idea that the councillor was gay and, in any event, criticising an elected official’s sartorial choices is not a hate crime. He also drew attention in his posts to the fact that Bennett was seen looking at his phone during a meeting. “I just remember waking up in my room with these four people around me.

They were all in uniform,” Fraser told the Telegraph, which is covering the story. “I asked them: ‘why are you here?’… I wasn’t scared but I didn’t know what I was being arrested for.” He says he joked with them that he was “surprised you are not arresting me for a Facebook comment”, but in fact they were.

Seizing his phone and computer, the cops took him to a local police station in the clothes he had been sleeping in plus a pair of Crocs that happened to be by his bed. They detained the schoolboy for several hours and interviewed him under caution at the local police station before releasing him on bail. The police asked him if he had ever visited Bennett’s home, but Fraser says he has no idea where he lives.

Although they released him later that day, they kept his phone and computer until last week – making his life, says Fraser, “really boring”. The FSU has instructed lawyers to act for Fraser both in connection with the criminal investigation and in any future claim for wrongful arrest against the force. “I would say my arrest was politically motivated,” says Fraser. “I can’t quite believe what’s happened to me. I would like an apology from the police. But I doubt they will give me one.”