Police 'hung up phone' on journalist abused on Twitter

A FEMALE journalist who was subjected to sexual abuse on Twitter says police put the phone down on her when she reported her tormentors. Nabila Ramdani says the Met refused to investigate for fear of creating paperwork.

Writing in The Observer, Ramdani accuses the police of hypocrisy because prosecutions have been brought against Twitter users who sent racially abuse to Premier League footballers. She says the Met's "view of internet hate crimes extends solely to famous people".

Ramdani is from an ethnic minority and there was a racial element to the abuse she received: one of the two men who abused her described her as an "immigrant prostitute".

As The Week online reported earlier this month, it is disturbingly common for female journalists to be abused online. Ramdani says she was easily able to track down the two men, revealing that one is "linked to a London university" while the other is a "Conservative party activist from the home counties".

Police also had little trouble in finding the anonymous users behind Twitter attacks on black footballers: two 17-year-olds are now facing prosecution over messages sent to Newcastle forward Sammy Ameobi using the 'n-word'. QPR defender Anton Ferdinand was called a "fucking black cunt" – and the Met traced his attacker.

So Ramdani says she was confident of a positive outcome. It took some time to get anybody to speak to her about the incident but when she did, a detective told her the case was to be dropped "before anyone had even begun investigating".

The reasons? It would generate "mounds of bureaucracy", the men might lie to try to avoid the accusation and the officer wasn't sure that calling a woman a "whore" would constitute a criminal offence. The officer then hung up.

Ramdani concludes: "If you are racially abused or suffer similar attacks on a social networking site, and think that you might be entitled to some Premier League justice, just remember this about the police: they won't give a tweet." ·