North cop’s vile slur to survivor of Hillsborough
A Northumbria Police officer has been warned after a Hillsborough survivor was targeted by a vile online post that dredged up false claims made against Liverpool fans in the wake of the tragedy.
The message questioned whether festival-goers had turned up drunk, late and ticketless in a direct response to tweets by the survivor over an abandoned music event.
The officer – whose semi-anony- mous account was linked to others under the name ‘Paul Davis’ – was “given words of advice” by bosses after the post was flagged up.
The message was posted on Twit- ter on August 6 – the weekend Liver- pool music festival Hope and Glory was cancelled.
It left thousands of music fans dis- appointed after buying tickets and travelling from across the country to witness acts including Charlotte Church and Reverend and the Mak- ers.
Among the failures was the lack of an emergency evacuation plan, acts running behind schedule and fears over the potential for overcrowding.
As concern over the event grew, a Hillsborough survivor – who we agreed not to name – tweeted a link to a Liverpool Echo article and the comment: “Police blame chaos at Hope & Glory festival on ‘a large number of members of the public’ turning up.” In response, a Twitter user named @rugby_paul7 wrote: “Maybe they all turned up drunk at the last minute without tickets.” The unsolicited response was sent directly to the survivor - whose Twitter alias makes clear he is sympathetic to the Hillsborough justice campaign. The officer’s account failed to respond to a message questioning his references to the slurs claiming the Hillsborough tragedy was caused by Liverpool FC fans turning up drunk, late and without tickets to the 1989 FA Cup semi-final against Nottingham Forest. Each of those claims was proved incorrect at the Hillsborough inquests where jurors ruled the 96 disaster victims were unlawfully killed and that Liverpool fans carried no responsibility for the disaster.
The @rugby_paul7 account used a cartoon face as its profile picture and made no obvious reference to being run by a police officer.
But a trawl through posts published by the account hinted at the identity of the person behind it.
The account’s history also contained other derogatory comments towards Liverpool supporters, though they dated back several years.
Links on it were posted to a fantasy football team and Facebook profile under the name Paul Davis.
Other posts referred to responses to police incidents under #Davislive, while pictures linked to the account included images of a police pocket notebook and a man wearing a Welsh police cap – which was described as the user’s “first international cap”, a reference to the caps international footballers typically receive when they represent their country.
It appeared the officer had been working for Greater Manchester Police.
However GMP said it had no officer matching the description of Davis currently on its books.
Recent posts pointed to a possible move to the North East and, after the tweet was raised with Northumbria Police, a spokeswoman said: “Northumbria Police were made aware of Twitter activity by one of its officers that contravened the force’s social media policy.
“We expect staff and officers to maintain the highest levels of professionalism in their online presence and as such they must not compromise or damage our strong relationships with the various communities within the Northumbria force area. The officer concerned has been given words of advice regarding their use of social media in a personal capacity.”
We contacted the @rugby_paul7 account through Twitter but received no response. An opportunity for him to comment submitted to Northumbria Police Federation also received no reply.
However, in the days after, the account was locked behind privacy settings.
It initially began to follow the Hillsborough survivor who had been targeted but made no contact.
During that period the number of ‘followers’ of the account dropped significantly in an apparent cull of people who could see its tweets.
The account name has now disappeared from the social media network.
Campaigner Steve Kelly, whose brother died at Hillsborough, said he was “saddened” by the tweet and feared it hinted that disproved, offensive views over the tragedy remained embedded within modern policing circles.
He said: “I tend to try and switch off sometimes but I can’t because they [the slurs] do continue to happen.
“They are offensive – no matter how much you want to say you can get over them, they are offensive and they do still hurt.
“I can’t imagine how survivors feel – it offends me on their behalf.”