Crimes arising from social media are ‘a real problem’, College of Policing head warns
Almost 6,000 officers are being trained to deal with online offences, Chief Constable Alex Marshall, head of the College of Policing has revealed, stating that social media counts for ‘at least half’ of complaints.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Law in Action, Marshall said: "As people have moved their shopping online and their communications online, they've also moved their insults, their abuse and their threats online, so I see that it won't be long before pretty much every investigation that the police conduct will have an online element to it.
"It's a real problem for people working on the front line of policing, and they deal with this every day."
At the moment, crimes that originate on social are classed under headings such as ‘harassment’, and not under ‘cybercrime’, so it is only be reading the reports that police can tell that the incident occurred on sites such as Twitter or Facebook.
Marshall suggested that in a typical day where perhaps they deal with a dozen calls, "they might expect that at least half of them, whether around antisocial behaviour or abuse or threats of assault may well relate to social media, Facebook, Twitter or other forms."
However, he added that the police cannot deal with “every bit of nonsense and disagreement” that takes place on social media.