Inappropriate police involvement in a twitter argument

[noblegiraffe]

This is on edutwitter but I know that some on this section are interested in this sort of thing so thought I would share it here.

A (reasonably well known and quite strident) teacher has quite a few detractors. One of them reported him to the police for harassment, the teacher was emailed and warned about their conduct.

"I emailed the PC with questions about what I'd done. I got no response. I sent a Subject Access Request and was told that the only information that could be released to me was the emails that I'd already been sent. While I wasn't expecting details of the complainant's accusations, this made no sense if the complaints had been investigated, that there would be no record of what I'd tweeted, no record of the phone call and no record of the warning in the email (the email had literally said "It will also be recorded that you have been warned about this behaviour").

With regard to 2) I went through all the guidance the police have for investigating harassment. Most seemed to imply the police shouldn't give "words of advice" or "warnings". I put in a Freedom of Information request to the relevant police force about their policies and procedures and they could find nothing about giving "words of advice"

The teacher got in contact with Harry Miller and the Free Speech Union who supported him with his dealings with the police who seem to have backed down.

twitter.com/oldandrewuk/status/1325334723611287555?s=21

Am I right in deducing he still has no idea what he's supposed to have said?

How is it ethical that all these people being investigated for wrong think are not even being told what crime they have committed.

How do you prepare a defence if you don't know what you are defending

It looks like he retweeted a screenshot of something that he'd previously said about the person and that was called harassment, but he and the other person have each other blocked and so the only way they could have seen it was by deliberately viewing his tweets from another account. I'm guessing it would be hard to prove harassment if the person claiming harassment had to make a deliberate effort to see the comment.

unbeliveable on the basis of one RTed tweet!

I assume the police are also working on the harassment case for JK...I mean look at ways been tweeted at her..

He could have summed that up much more succinctly frankly. This did not need that many tweets as part of a single thread.

This is absurd and a violation of human rights. I hope he responds to the newly launched consultation on Freedom of speech.
It's looking for views and evidence e.g.

Does hate speech law need to be updated or clarified as shifting social attitudes lead some to consider commonly held views hateful?

• Does current police guidance and practice on hate speech law help promote freedom of expression?

committees.parliament.uk/call-for-evidence/307/freedom-of-expression/

It does need need to be pointed out that the police weren’t acting here because of an allegation of a hate crime, but because of an allegation of harassment.

However misuse of police resources in order to intimidate or silence opponents on social media needs to be looked at as a whole.

Haha! I knew it was going to be OA before I got to the tweet. While I completely disagree with involving the police, Andrew has form for ‘going after’ people, and when he does it is remarkably unpleasant. I say this from experience.

I used to argue with him back in the TES days and know what he’s like, but at least on twitter you can just block people.

Oh god! Is OA still out there doing his do?

I'm another who used to spar with him on TES! Not sure I ever agreed with his attitude, sense of immutable correctness on all subjects in the world! He was/is? one of the most unpleasant posters I have had the misfortune to e-meet on any platform!

Whoever is taking him on is going to be very much the biter bit... or maybe this is the time that he will be!

Either way, his situation is ludicrous!