Re: [OT] 71 year old Brit arrested for tweet taken out of context

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.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a44S7nnT5oo [14 minutes]
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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.
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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.

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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.
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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.