Very recently, we were informed by a member of the public of an account that we have previously reported in on a number of occasions. In fact, we started reporting the account @davymaccas since 2012 and have only once received feedback from Merseyside Police. The e-mail telling us that enquiries were being made has not been followed up on.
Community information on this account suggests that the individual may reside in Liverpool which meant that we reported the tweets in centrally through a Ministry of Justice and ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) site and to ensure that the case did not fall through any cracks, we also reported it to Merseyside Police directly.
Given the nature of the tweets that we have listed, one would assume that a report from a third-party national hate crime organisation would be taken seriously, as other forces do. Yet, after reporting this account in again, (we count approximately 16 times since 2012), we were shocked to receive what can only be called a bureaucratic brush off by a Merseyside Officer, with no further action taken by them.
We have listed the response below and think that it is, frankly, not good enough.
“Good morning. I have taken advice from a senior officer here at Mereyside (sic) Police. The advice is that until there is proof that this person resides on Merseyside you would have to report it to your own force area.”
The world of bureaucracy it seems, is alive and well and given the nature of the threats and the fact that community intelligence led us to report to Merseyside Police, this is probably one of the worst displays of ‘passing the buck’ we have seen to date.
