Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: moviePig <nobody@nowhere.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: [OT] 71 year old Brit arrested for tweet taken out of context
Date: Tue, 13 May 2025 22:18:02 -0400
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On 5/13/2025 6:57 PM, Rhino wrote:
> 
> On 2025-05-13 5:40 PM, moviePig wrote:
>> On 5/13/2025 4:08 PM, Rhino wrote:
>>> It took SIX police officers armed with pepper spray and batons to 
>>> arrest a 71 year old Brit - who was a retired constable himself - 
>>> after he wrote a tweet that was taken out of context. He then spent 8 
>>> hours at the police station being interrogated.
>>>
>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a44S7nnT5oo [14 minutes]
>>>
>>> The comments tell us that it is almost impossible to get a police 
>>> response to a burglary, mugging, or anything else that we might call 
>>> a real crime but say something that *might* offend someone, then they 
>>> can send out a large contingent of officers.
>>>
>>> It's no wonder that some large policing districts literally haven't 
>>> solved a burglary or car theft - not a single one - in years. They're 
>>> all too busy policing speech.
>>
>> I watched enough to hear that the guy (mistakenly) sent a tweet that 
>> said "Round up the Jews".  Before leaping on officers for responding, 
>> ask yourself whether these same commentators -- if the guy HAD gone on 
>> some murderous anti-semitic rampage -- would now be brandishing the 
>> tweet as evidence of feckless police inaction.
>>
>>
> Apparently, if you had read the chain of tweets, it would have been 
> blindingly obvious that the man meant nothing of the kind and police 
> should have been able to see it plainly. (Unfortunately, they don't 
> share the whole context with us or tell us how to find it so it's 
> difficult to be sure.)
> 
> In any case, is it your position that anything upsetting which is said 
> online, regardless of context, needs to be investigated by police 
> immediately and the offender arrested lest something horrible happen? Or 
> are we just reserving this treatment for those who are likely to be 
> deemed "right wing"?

I leave the politics here to you.  I'm merely noting that we live in a 
litigious society where even a 10% threat puts responders (i.e., the 
cops) in the crosshairs of second-guess hindsight lawsuits.