Police force condemns xenophobic comments about criminals on social media

Public should challenge those making racist comments

(Colin Manton/Creative Commons)

A police force has condemned people for making racist comments about offenders and assumptions about their backgrounds on its Facebook page.

“The colour of someone’s skin or a name that’s not ‘traditional’ is usually a trigger for these assumptions,” Gloucestershire Constabulary wrote. “Despite commenters not knowing the citizenship of offenders or whether or not they have spent all, most or even just a small part of their lives living in the UK, we often get told to ‘deport them’”.

It added that a “small but vocal number of people” were making assumptions.

“You’re free to criticise us on our posts and we rarely remove comments,” it said. ”What we won’t accept you doing here is writing comments below our posts that encourage xenophobia; the fear or hatred of that which is perceived to be foreign or strange.”

The force it will consider “blocking regular commenters” who make statements of a xenophobic nature.

The negative impact of prejudice and hate meant a number of incidents went unreported, it said.

It also added it “would welcome support in challenging” the comments from “the majority of people who don’t post such comments.”

A majority of the comments were positive and supportive of the post.

“Thank you for addressing this difficult issue. There will always be a ‘presence’ from this sector of the public, and my hope is that education and awareness might lead to better understanding and tolerance,” one wrote.

Another said: “This is the attitude I want to see from my police force, thank you! I do try to challenge racist and xenophobic statements, but I’m not always mentally prepared for the inevitable backlash of abuse.”

One person was “surprised” it had taken “this long to impose”, adding, “better late than never!”

While some questioned why people making xenophobic comments were not arrested and cautioned, others expressed empathy with people of colour by stating how the response of ‘trolls” being challenged gave a taste of being on the receiving end of hate crime.

Others were less positive and the force blocked a comment from a Tommy Robinson supporter who used the word “Nazi.”

Screen shot of a comment made by a Tommy Robinson supporter on the Facebook page of Gloucestershire Police (Gloucestershire Constabulary/Facebook)

Meanwhile, others said the police post was a threat to freedom of speech, with one person stating: “Turning into communist state telling you what to think, say and do, gonna control what we see on the Internet, what is this China?”

A spokesperson for the force said it had not prosecuted anyone for xenophobic comments on its page.

They added: ”We have noticed a number of comments that while not meeting the threshold of a criminal offence are prejudiced or xenophobic and that is why we have taken the decision to post this message.”