British police have reported Katie Hopkins to Twitter and urged another user to do the same after ruling a message sent by the right-wing media personality to be “insensitive” but not criminal.
Leftist opponents of Mrs Hopkins urged police to take action over a poll discussing possible identities of the five men whose bodies were pulled from the sea at Camber Sands this week.
Some users reacted with fury after the columnist tweeted the line “5 dead at Camber Sands were…”, with “Aspiring footballers”, “Mentally ill”, “Fans of Anders Brevik” and “Big fans of inflatables” as options users could choose from.
There was some speculation as to the men’s identities after initial reports suggested the men were pulled from the water fully clothed.
Directing their attention to the survey, Stewart Ayrey asked Sussex Police on the social media website whether there was “anything [they] can do” about the tweet, which he described as “bad taste at the very least”.
The person manning the official police account replied: “Incredibly insensitive, although not criminal. We suggest reporting her to Twitter. We have already.”
Replying to a tweet from another user, the police representative wrote, “Simply not appropriate to joke about five deaths the day after the incident.”
it would bother us! Simply not appropriate to joke about five deaths the day after the incident
— Sussex Police (@sussex_police) August 25, 2016
Some users were angered by the police’s decision not to prosecute the LBC radio hostess for the poll while others questioned whether it’s the police’s job to report people to the social networking site.
https://twitter.com/theSocial_idiot/status/768838918972305408
@sussex_police here it says ‘indecent or grossly offensive’ and offense is the ‘sending’ NOT reception of message pic.twitter.com/6avQnCcga2
— juanito (@theSocial_idiot) August 25, 2016
https://twitter.com/Madamplease/status/768835332234240001
The bodies were found to be five young men from London’s Sri Lankan community who had traveled to the East Sussex coastline to spend a day at the beach.
Albanian migrants were rescued from a boat off Dymchurch just 20 miles from Camber Sands in May.
There have been attempts by migrants to swim across the channel to reach Britain. Last year the wetsuit-clad body of a Syrian, who “wanted to go to England to continue his studies”, washed up in the Netherlands.
Mouaz al-Balkhi had been living in the Calais’ so-called “jungle” and is presumed to have died attempting to swim to the UK.
A spokesman for Sussex Police said: “At about 10.30am on Thursday, Sussex Police was made aware of a tweet, which the force considered to be insensitive. This has been reported to Twitter.
“Our primary concern is for the thoughts and feelings of the next of kin of those who sadly died at Camber.”
The poll concerned has now been removed.
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