Met Police apologise to Graham Linehan after Heathrow arrest
Graham Linehan. (Getty)
The Metropolitan Police has apologised to Graham Linehan after finding that his arrest at Heathrow Airport last September was handled poorly.
Linehan was detained by five armed officers in September 2025 on suspicion of committing a public order offence over posts he had made on X months earlier.
In one post, he wrote that if a trans woman was in a female-only space, people should “make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”
He was questioned for several hours before being bailed and was later told he would face no charges.
Following a formal complaint and legal action from Linehan, Scotland Yard conducted a five-month internal investigation.
It found that officers had ‘wrongly focused on the anti-transgender’ element of the posts rather than the alleged incitement to violence, and that the investigation had been hampered by an inexperienced trainee detective and poor supervision, as per The Telegraph.
Inspector Matt Hume of the Met’s directorate of professional standards said the service provided “was not acceptable” and offered an unreserved apology for the “distress and impact” caused.
None of the officers involved face sanctions beyond what the Met described as “learning through reflection.”
The Met has since introduced new guidelines encouraging officers to focus on “grossly offensive” content and cases posing the “most serious risk” when handling online hate crime reports.
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