Britain’s police might be a bit pants at stopping actual crimes, like London’s staggering murder rate, or the industrial-scale rape of little girls by Pakistani Muslim gangs, but you have to hand it to them: they’re right on the ball when it comes to people saying mean things on the internet.
What radio host Julia Hartley-Brewer savaged as the “hurty-feelings unit” is ever-vigilant and ready to swing into action at the slightest hint that someone in cyberspace might be saying something not approved by the PC-police.
Police in the British county of Gwent warned internet commenters that they could be prosecuted for mocking a wanted drug dealer’s receding hairline, seen in a viral mugshot widely disseminated on social media this month.
That’s right: child-rape gangs are able to perpetrate their foul crimes for decades with impugnity, but don’t dare say anything that might hurt a criminal’s feelings.
In a since-deleted Facebook post, Gwent Police appealed to the public for help tracking down Jermaine Taylor, 21, wanted for breaching his license conditions.
But Taylor’s mugshot, which showed off his substantial forehead and the sparse tendrils of hair adorning his scalp, didn’t have its intended effects on social media users.
Commenters ruthlessly mocked the convicted drug pusher, with some tweeting, “His forehead is bigger than his future,” and that his hairline had been “pushed back more times than Brexit”…
“He was last seen in town; Police are combing the area,” and “He’s vanished into thin hair,” quipped other users.
And still others wrote, “Push his release date back further than his hairline, that should teach him,” and “Who’s missing him or his hair piece?”
Hate speech! Triggered! Send up the Hurt-Signal!
Gwent Police were concerned, responding to the devastating rhetorical burns by issuing a statement…“Please remember that harassing, threatening and abusing people on social media can be against the law,” police said in the statement.
Instead of chasing down drug-dealers, the Plod are busily checking Facebook. No wonder London’s violent crime rate is starting to resemble 1970s New York.
“Can’t work out what’s thinner. This guy’s hair or Gwent police’s skin?”
pluralist.com/gwent-police-hairline
As one of the titular Germans said in Fawlty Towers: however did they win?