City of London Police recorded a hate complaint from a man who claimed he had been given a dodgy haircut.
The Lithuanian said his barber was “aggressive and rough” because he spoke Russian, The Sun reports.
It was one of 13,000 non-crime hate incidents recorded by UK police forces in the year to June.
A storm continues over whether guidance around NCHIs is being misapplied after Essex Police dropped its case against Telegraph writer Allison Pearson for alleged incitement of racial hatred over a year-old deleted post online.
A log of the rough haircut incident in London’s Square Mile said: “Barber asked him about the present situation in Ukraine, victim stated that all conversations with the barber were fine, but he stated that the barber was aggressive and rough whilst he was cutting his hair.
“The victim believes this was because he spoke Russian and is a hate incident.”
A City of London Police spokesman told the Standard: “The report was made online and later withdrawn. The barber was not spoken to.”
Chief constables stand accused of wasting time and undermining public confidence by probing trivial matters amid surging violent crime, shoplifting and mobile phone snatching.
Similar cases saw officers in Cambridgeshire called to a German woman offended by being compared to a rottweiler in a parking dispute with a neighbour.
Essex Police logged 96 NCHIs in a year, including one where the “suspect has told two men to stop kissing”.
The Wiltshire force investigated an incident where a person in the street said others were mocking the length of their hair.
Bedfordshire officers probed a man for “racial hatred” for whistling the Bob the Builder tune at his neighbour in 2021.
A person in South Yorkshire said they were the victim of homophobic abuse in a row over a privet hedge when a neighbour called him a “Leonard”.
In West Yorkshire, a disabled Blue Badge parking permit holder claimed Facebook posts referred to her being physically active.
Colleagues in the same force logged an incident where a mother said her son’s swimming teacher had allowed him to bang his head against the side of a pool “due to ethnicity”.
Officers have also recorded NCHIs against children as young as nine, including one who called a fellow primary school pupil a “retard” and against two schoolgirls who said another smelt “like fish”.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: “The police should not waste any valuable time on incidents like this. There is plenty of real crime they should be preventing and solving.
“An aggressively-administered haircut is not a police matter.
“The police should only spend time investigating or recording actual criminal allegations or incidents where there is a real and imminent risk of criminality subsequently occurring.
“The Government needs to urgently update the guidance to ensure this is the case.
“This nonsense undermines confidence in policing.”
Telegraph columnist Ms Pearson said she was wearing her dressing gown when she was spoken to by two constables who knocked on her door in Saffron Walden, Essex on Remembrance Sunday.
News of the visit sparked a backlash, including from former Conservative prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, who both called the incident “appalling”, and X owner Elon Musk.
Essex Police have closed their investigation on Thursday and an independent review will be launched into the force’s handling of the case.
Gavin Stephens, chairman of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, said officers must investigate NCHIs so they do not miss “precursors to violence”.
In September, watchdog His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary found that police are recording and attending too many of them and not consistently applying national guidance.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said officers should adopt “a common sense and consistent approach”.
