Racist Idiots aren't Criminals

Stan Collymore

Britain has some rare distinctions.

It's the most burgled country in Europe. It's got the highest rate of violent assault in Europe. In fact, outside of gun crime, it's got a worse record for crime than even the "wild west" of the United States.

Why? Perhaps it's because instead of pounding the beat, cuffing crooks and keeping our pensioners safe from assault, Britain's cops are more focused on 'essential' duties like policing micro blogging site Twitter.

Read: Newcastle Man Arrested Over Racist Tweets.

"Just after midnight police received a complaint of racist comments that had been made on Twitter. Officers are carrying out inquiries."

These inquiries led to a 21-year-old man being arrested for "a Section Five racial public order offence and a Section Five public order offence" after sending two 140 character messages on Twitter.

Now, in all seriousness, I have to ask - are you kidding me?

There is SO much wrong with this story that it just makes me want to vomit. It's indicative of everything that's wrong with British society. Let me explain why.

First off, I'm not defending the racist idiot who sent the twitter messages. I have no tolerance for abuse of any kind. In addition to being a racist Twit (ha, see what I did there?) he was also an idiot for broadcasting his small-mindedness to millions of Twitter members, and having it attached to his real name and identity.

In my opinion, he received instant justice in the form of thousands of abusive tweets sent back in response and Twitter (who are a private company, and can do what they want) deleting his account under their Terms of Service agreement.

What I fail to see, however, is how what he wrote was a criminal offense.

Perhaps this is because I live in America now and have all sorts of fanciful notions about concepts like "Freedom of Speech" - something that isn't a protected right in Europe.

I deplore what this Geordie idiot wrote, but would rather have to listen to him say it than live in a country in which you can be arrested and charged for expressing yourself (even if what your 'expression' is disgusting, racist drivel.)

Secondly, and more importantly, I dislike how the police singled out this 21-year-old to press criminal charges against when Twitter remains replete with racism. I just did a search for the two racist terms contained within the offending Tweets to Stan Collymore and here are some of the results that appeared:

I fail to understand why the guy in Newcastle was handcuffed and charged with two criminal offenses while literally hundreds of other people commit the same offenses on Twitter every single day. If there was a "Twitter crimes" division of the Metropolitan Police, it would be one of the largest at Scotland Yard!

Actually I take that back. I understand perfectly why this racist idiot was singled out - because his Tweets made national headlines and were targeted towards an absurdly rich footballer. The multitude of people who commit exactly the same offense every single day are not worthy of police investigation because the people they target are not rich or famous.

(I apologize for my confusion there - it's because, like "freedom of speech" I had some daft notion that "equal protection under the law" was a protected right in Britain. Not so!)

While we're on the subject, one of the reasons I've always taken a rather politically incorrect stance on accusations of racism is because I find the politics of "racialism" to be rampantly hypocritical. I think it's disgusting to target somebody with a racist slur, but I don't see how it's any different to being targeted with an equally offensive slur about your weight, or looks, or (you probably saw this coming) hair color.

Somebody calling Stan Collymore a rude word gets them locked up - yet where were the police when I had people posting on pictures of my newborn son back in 2008 telling me I "should get him euthanized because he's ginger"?

That is, to my mind, a thousand times more disgusting and offensive than what was Tweeted to Stan Collymore; yet "gingers" aren't protected by British law so the police response to that would likely have been: "suck it up."

(Mind you, if you're getting racist abuse on Twitter, but you're not a footballer earning 23,000 GBP a day, their response is probably going to be the same.)

The irony is, of course, that ginger-baiting is a popular trend on social media - as I wrote about here.

Stan Collymore earns in a day more than most people in Britain earn in an entire year. If the price of that are a couple of racist tweets, you could argue that it's worth it. After all, there are thousands of British people who get similar abuse thrown at them every single day - because of their skin color, sexuality, hair color, weight... None of them get the same level of police response.

Until they do, (or, if you believe in freedom of speech, don't) I think the arrest of Stan Collymore's abuser is utterly absurd: a complete waste of police resources and indicative of everything that's wrong and hypocritical with British society.