AN ALREADY stretched police service is seeing an increasing number of calls to crimes committed online\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and more responsibility needs to be taken by social media giants, police officers have said.<\/p>\n
Police officers are being called with ever more frequency to abuse committed on websites such as Twitter and Facebook. Some estimates suggest that around half of all calls made to the police originate from crimes committed online.<\/p>\n
Ian Hopkins, national policing lead for digital engagement and deputy chief constable of Greater Manchester Police, said: \u201cWhen it comes to social media, people have moved their insults online and inevitably we are seeing more and more people contacting us over abuse and threats.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of these things are very minor and that should be sorted out by between themselves and the social media provider. There are some bigger issues that we have to deal with and that is totally acceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alex Marshall, Chief Executive of the College of Policing, told the BBC\u2019s Law in Action programme: \u201cIt is a real problem for people on the frontline of policing and they deal with this every day.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn a typical day, where they might deal with a dozen calls they might expect that at least half of them, where they are around antisocial behaviour, or abuse, or threats of assault may well relate to Facebook, Twitter or other forms.\u201d<\/p>\n
Officers across the country have voiced their frustrations at being called to resolve disputes on websites belonging to a private company.<\/p>\n
A Surrey PC said: \u201cWe need to educate people so that in the first instance they should be blocking and unfriending the person concerned and if the problem persists then report it to Facebook or Twitter. We cannot be responsible for policing the web-space belonging to a private company.<\/p>\n
\u201cACPO and the Home Office need to be firm with social media companies \u2013 the onus is on them to sort out disputes on their websites.\u201d<\/p>\n
A PC from North Wales Police said: \u201cWhere it\u2019s clear cut that it\u2019s not a police matter \u2013 unless it\u2019s a proper threat which we would take seriously \u2013 why are we being dispatched?\u201d<\/p>\n
A PC from West Midlands Police added: \u201cWe have no issue with the level of investigation we place on domestic violence given what has occurred in the past. However, social media has added an-other element. Most of it is harmless nonsense but if it\u2019s between ex partners \u2013 all of a sudden it\u2019s an investigation. Whatever the ultimate outcome it takes time and resources to sort the nonsense out. In a way it\u2019s back covering \u2013 no one wants a serious case review do they?\u201d<\/p>\n
A sergeant from Thames Valley Police agreed that policing domestic violence makes forces and officers respond to more social media related calls. \u201cA simple ignore social media policy will fail,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m not sure someone will be brave enough to make that call as imagine if we miss a do-mestic murder that started out as an internet harassment report and progressed. The victim gets ignored by the police and then isn\u2019t confident to report when it starts to happen for real.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
AN ALREADY stretched police service is seeing an increasing number of calls to crimes committed online\u00a0\u2013\u00a0and more responsibility needs to be taken by social media giants, police officers have said.\u2026 read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1718,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1717"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1719,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1717\/revisions\/1719"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/essexfedfocus.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}