Teenager Arrested In England For Criticizing Olympic Athlete On Twitter

An anonymous reader writes "A teenager from Dorset, England was arrested for sending a Twitter message to Olympic athlete Tom Daley saying: 'You let your dad down i hope you know that.' Police arrested the 17-year-old boy as part of an investigation into 'malicious tweets' after Daley and his teammate missed out on a medal. Daley's father died from cancer last year. While it is rarely used and the police have not indicated whether they are pressing charges, the Communications Act 2003 s.127 covers the sending of improper messages. Section 127(1)(a) relates to a message that is grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character. Sean Duffy was convicted and sentenced earlier this year for similar comments. I look forward to tens of thousands of arrests across England over the next few days as all public remarks which may cause offense, regardless of their target, are investigated by the law." According to the Guardian, another (since deleted) tweet threatened Daley with drowning, but the law doesn't require threats of violence for an arrest to be made.

He wasn't arrested for the criticism.

[Anonymous Coward]

He was arrested as he made a threat to kill the athlete, this doesn't mean any charges will be brought against him. I find it more likely that the Police will give him a severe talking to telling him to stop being a troll or face charges being brought in the future.

Re:Wait, what??

[Dan Dankleton]

I think you parsed that sentence incorrectly.
"the law doesn't require threats of violence for an arrest to be made" - i.e. an arrest can be made even if no threat of violence has been made. If a threat of violence has been made then an arrest can also be made.

Might be more to this one...

[RogueyWon]

Even the well-known and strongly libertarian political blogger Paul Staines/Guido Fawkes is being a bit cagey about this one [order-order.com]. Making death threats via a written, public means of communication is about as far from smart as you can get.

Actually, just noticed that more details of the exchange, including screen-caps of the deleted posts, are available at this blog [blogspot.co.uk] (along with a bit of commentary, so you can make your own mind up.

He Did Appear to Make a Threat Actually

[eldavojohn]

No, he did not make any threats. You clearly didn't actually read the article. Threats of violence actually are NOT enough to lead to arrest, but asshole-ish tweets are. Read the article before posting such crap.

I can't believe I'm linking to The Huffington Post as a better source but for lack of any other site that is explaining it better, here's a timeline of the tweets [huffingtonpost.co.uk].

Here's the tweet in question:

@TomDaley1994 i'm going to find you and i'm going to drown you in the pool you cocky twat your a nobody people like you make me sick

It is listed in the Guardian article but doesn't say it's from the arrested suspect.

Re:Wow...

[91degrees]

Most laws are like that. They rely on a "reasonable person" test. would a reasonable person consider the tweet:

come on then you cunt i'll stick a knife down your fuckin throat now comeback and stop hiding from me

or

do you want me to come to your fucking house now with a rope and strangle you with it

to be grossly offensive? These were sent to other twitterers and it's probably these that prompted the arrest.

source: (LiberalConspiracy [liberalconspiracy.org])

Re:Since when?

[Desler]

When you threaten to kill people?

@_ollyriley come on then you cunt i’ll stick a knife down your fuckin throat now comeback and stop hiding from me

@theroycropper do you want me to come to your fucking house now with a rope and strangle you with it

Re:He wasn't arrested for the criticism.

[adam.bower]

Yes he did make a threat to kill as I read the tweet and told the athlete to report it to the police.

Re:Jeremy Clarkson

[Spad]

Because, if the Twitter joke trial has taught us anything, it's that there is an important difference between comments made in jest and actual, serious threats against someone's well-being.

Saying "My ideas for the opening ceremony were rejected. I suggested we should crash a burning Jag into Mitt Romney." is clearly not an actual threat to carry out such an action.

Saying "Come on then you cunt, I'll stick a knife down your fukkin throat now comeback and stop hiding from me" can be more reasonably seen as an actual threat, context permitting.

The police have overreacted by arresting him, but the accuracy of the reporting of the incident by the media has been astonishingly poor.

Re:He wasn't arrested for the criticism.

[adam.bower]

The source was me reading the tweets and telling the athlete that malicious communications can be reported to the police, the first tweet about the guys dad wouldn't have met the criteria to be malicious in all likelihood, the one threatening to kill would.

Both title and content of this post are wrong.

[Michael_gr]

The guy was arrested but not for said tweet - he was arrested for those other tweets in which he threatened Daley and several other tweeters with murder. Making death threats is NOT free speech whether you are using Tweeter or cut-out letters from a newspaper. The article does mention that and says that "the law doesn't require threats of violence for an arrest to be made". Perhaps that's true but in *this* case he *was* arrested because of the death threats, not because of the abusive nature of his first tweet. The poster is clearly attempting to obfuscate the truth here.

The one thing that's puzzling is that according to the article the same tweeter first made a disparaging comment, then apologized, then backtracked and threatened Daley and was abusive to others. That's some odd behavior. Was he high? Is he suffering from bipolar disorder? perhaps someone hacked his account? I don't know

Re:Sigh...

[igb]

"It's at this point that @Rileyy_69 began lashing out with offensive tweets"

Actually, it isn't. A glance at his history (now, unfortunately, protected) showed that threatening rape, assault on pregnant women, knifing, strangling and the rest was his long-term form. As it happens, Twitter, which is fast becoming a sewer, is full of people talking like that, and it's only because he was foolish enough to get involved in a public figure that it came to attention. But that doesn't make it any less unpleasant. Clearly, he's like that all the time.

Re:Wow...

[timeOday]

Maybe the summary was updated after you read it, but that's not what he was arrested for. (I guess that was just the usual flamebait to get the conversation going...)

Re:Wow...

[Dan541]

In England you can be arrested for "going equipped". For example if you have a crowbar, pliers and other tools in your car they will claim that you are going equipped to commit burglary, you don't actually need to do the crime.

Re:Wow...

[History's Coming To]

It's being misreported by the press. He was reported for the Daley posts, which were distasteful but not illegal. He was arrested because of racially motivated incitement to violence in an unrelated, but recent post. Basically saying Muslims should be attacked, which is most definitely illegal.