Another child sex ring was broken up in the United Kingdom this week, and questions are already swirling about how police handled the matter.

Seventeen men and one woman were arrested in connection to this vile criminal operation that is believed to have abused at least 600 girls. The men appear to all hail from Muslim immigrant communities.

The case evokes the infamous Rotherham sex ring that was finally taken down in 2014. In that criminal operation, several Pakistani men were able to abuse and exploit an estimated 1,400 girls for several years. One local official, Jayne Senior, tried to alert police when the ring first began operating, but her warnings were suppressed as “racist” and she was ordered to take sensitivity training by her superiors.

Additionally, fathers who tried to rescue their daughters from the clutches of the Rotherham sex gang were arrested by police.

Essentially, the police allowed the grooming gang to victimize hundreds of girls — all because they were more worried about being called racist than protecting the vulnerable.

In the Newcastle case, the primary skepticism is not over a cover-up, but the tactics police used to nab the gang. Law enforcement paid a convicted child rapist thousands of dollars to keep an eye on the sex ring, which has naturally drawn criticism.

The Rotherham whistleblower also criticized British law enforcement’s lukewarm response to immigrant sex gangs abusing hundreds of victims. “It just upsets me – how many more lives have been destroyed?” Senior said of the Newcastle revelations.

A prominent Labour Party leader echoed Senior’s statements on the Newcastle sex gang, saying, “People are more afraid to be called a racist than they are afraid to be wrong about calling out child abuse.”

While the authorities may appear to be troubled by speaking out against immigrant grooming gangs, there is one thing they have no problem addressing with full vigor: mean words on the internet.

Around the same time news broke of the Newcastle grooming gang, Sussex police were announcing their investigation into a more grievous crime — harsh “transphobic” words exchanged between school children.

Sussex Police Hate Crime Sergeant (yes, that’s a real title) Peter Allan tweeted out on Tuesday how his department had conducted a thorough investigation into the “hate incident” involving children. No charges were filed, but Allan was adamant to his many critics that the “education” officers gave children was valuable police work.

The hate crime sergeant later deleted his tweet and his entire account due to the severe mockery his announcement received. The tweet was not an outlier of the investigations Allan tweeted out, as most were of a similar frivolous nature.

Sussex police are not alone in the zeal to crack down on supposed “offensive” speech. Pretty much every law enforcement agency in the U.K. is devoted to policing the words of the citizens they’re supposed to protect.

Any time Islamic terror strikes the nation, police are quick to declare that there will be zero tolerance for criticism of the religion of peace — and they back up their claims.

After the Manchester bombing in June, London Metropolitan Police said that a tweet from conservative commentator Katie Hopkins was under investigation for inciting hate. In 2013, police arrested several people for anti-Islam comments following a crazed jihadi beheading a soldier on a British street. (RELATED: Theresa May’s Answer To Terror: Restrict The Internet)

When not punishing ordinary citizens reacting to the slaughter of their countrymen, British police still stay busy making sure no one says anything offensive.

In July, the Wiltshire Police Department threatened to crack down on online trolls, and then doubled-down to say that it would arrest anyone who made fun of their threats. (RELATED: UK Police Force Threatens To Charge Twitter Users Who Mocked It)

Last week, a British man who runs a conservative Facebook page claimed Bedfordshire police officers threatened him with hate crime charges for allegedly having “Islamophobic” content on his page.

That same police department is currently running a campaign aimed at the “extreme right” that warns meeting someone at the gym could lead to radicalization.

To Americans, this all looks incredibly ridiculous. Police should be out finding real criminals — like child rape gangs — instead of focusing on internet trolls. But British police, at least according to their social media accounts, appear to be more obsessed with rooting out wrong-think.

At the same time police Twitter accounts shriek about hate speech, hundreds of young girls are raped by immigrant predators, and few dare address it out of fear of the “racist” charge.

The priorities of British police perfectly illustrate the concept of “anarcho-tyranny.” This phrase, popular among paleoconservatives, describes how a government refuses to deal with real criminals while spending inordinate amounts of time punishing law-abiding citizens. A large-scale child sex ring is covered up, but a Facebook post warrants an intimidating visit from the hate crime sergeant.

This insane framework is justified on the grounds of ensuring a multicultural society works, or at least punishing citizens for thinking it doesn’t. Even if there are immigrant grooming gangs operating in your city, the example of Jayne Senior and the Rotherham dads serves as a cold warning that it is better to be silent than to protect kids.

We can always expect the liberal chattering class to pooh-pooh any concerns about these kinds of crimes and smear anyone who worries about them as a vile racist. It’s par for the course for pundits and activists to do their most to few question the benefits of multiculturalism.

But we expect police to stay away from politics and focus solely on protecting and serving the community — not on enforcing the dictates of political correctness.

Britons can no longer expect that of their police.

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