The statistics were accessed by the Press Association News
Agency under freedom of information legislation. The statistics themselves came
from just over half of the legal forces from England, Wales and Scotland.
The 29 police forces recorded almost 5000 incidents between
January and November 2012 in which Facebook or twitter was a factor.
These figures indicate a huge rise in the number of
complaints made to police due to social media activity. The BBC News team
stated that it represented a rise of
780% over a 4 year period; a time which has ostensibly seen a massive
uptick in social media usage.
Of the 29 police forces 18 provided details relating to the
number of criminal charges that were delivered: a total of 653.
Among the most common complaints made to the police were of
harassment and menacing messages.
Chief constable Andy Trotter of the Association of Chief
Police Officers welcomed the recent guidance delivered by the DPP and echoed
the belief that there should be a high threshold before any sort of police
intervention. He added that people should be free to communicate even if their
messages were obnoxious.
The big thing to remember here is that the figures relating to the number of people charged with social media crimes represents only a fraction - around a third - of police activity in England, Scotland and Wales. Around a half of police forces (29 in total) provided information on the number of complaints made, and then only 19 police forces provided information on the number of charges made for social media crimes.
You can read more from the BBC on this, here.
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