British police receive almost 600 reports of online abuse against English footballers; 26 currently under investigation – Channel 4 News

As England prepare for their next match against Slovakia at Euro 2024, Channel 4 News can exclusively reveal that since the start of the tournament, the UK Football Police Unit (UKFPU) has received 571 reports of online abuse towards English players, with 26 incidents resulting in an investigation. Most of them are racist posts.

“About 85 per cent of the majority of very offensive posts we see are racism, closely followed by homophobia,” said Superintendent Mike Ankers, head of investigations at the UKFPU. Looking at the 12 posts he’s currently investigating, he said “at least half of them will meet the threshold” for him to take action. “We are still dealing with the disgusting use of the N-word. They will be quite visible. We will also get things like the monkey emoji, which in itself will be very offensive. So we would take action.”

Following the first match against Serbia, the UKFPU received 102 reports of online abuse, with 12 currently being investigated. Following the match against Denmark, 292 social media posts were referred, with three reaching the threshold for police to open an investigation. Following England’s final group match against Slovenia, 177 posts were referred, with 11 currently being investigated.

On the actions that the police will take, Ankers said: “We are trying to take a proportionate approach. There is education, so at a lower level, for first-time offenders, we would definitely like to try to go through that education programme. What we saw in 2022, which followed the three black players missing penalties in 2021, was a change in the law which meant that hateful online abuse became a section one offence, which allowed us to apply for a banning order. A banning order allows us to take away probably the only thing that they enjoy, which is football, for up to ten years, which means they can’t travel or watch matches.”

After England lost to Italy in the last Euro final at Wembley Stadium in July 2021, a wave of racist insults appeared online against three England players who missed penalties: Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka. 11 people were arrested.

This has led to calls for police and social media companies to take further action. Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram and Threads, said it has clear policies on hate speech and does not tolerate it on its apps. In a statement, they said: “We have invested more than $20 billion in safety and security since 2016 and have quadrupled the size of our global safety and security team to approximately 40,000 people. This includes 15,000 content reviewers who review content on Facebook, Instagram and Threads.”

The new Internet Safety Bill will also mean regulator Ofcom will be able to hold social media platforms to account for online abuse. But Tony Burnett, chief executive of anti-racism football campaign group Kick It Out, said there was still more work to be done.

“We have had more discrimination complaints than ever this season, which is a record number. This growth comes specifically from social media. I’m not saying the police don’t do anything. I’m not saying social media organizations don’t do anything. However, player experience and our experience working in this field indicate that the number of incidents continues to increase. And while this is the case, we cannot become complacent and claim that enough is happening to stop it, because clearly it is not.

In response, Mike Ankers said: “I absolutely understand why people say they (social media companies) haven’t done enough. But in my experience, I’ve been really encouraged by the work and the collaborative approach that the companies have been working with the police, certainly at this point. So I think there are promising signs there.”

Both Burnett and police share concerns that the longer England participates in the tournament, the higher the stakes become, and fear that if they lose, some players would be blamed and possibly exploited.

“I really hope we win the tournament, in which case we could be having a completely different conversation. If there is an unfortunate event where we lose, regardless of which player is involved, I just hope that the social media organisations have learned from this (Euro 2021) experience, have put preventative measures in place and the UKFPU is prepared to prosecute anyone who repeats this type of abuse.”

In Germany alone, the UKFPU said the majority of English fans had behaved exceptionally well, with tens of thousands of fans flocking there since the tournament started on June 14.

There were problems ahead of England’s first match against Serbia in Gelsenkirchen on 16 June. The UKFPU said six England fans had been handed football bans related to the disorder. Three of those fans are now banned from international football in England and at home for three years; the other three have five-year bans. The UKFPU said it was still investigating other people suspected of being involved.

Before the tournament, there were concerns about the increase in football unrest. Arrests at matches in England and Wales hit a nine-year high in the 2022-23 season, with 2,264 football-related arrests, according to Home Office data. Data for last season is not yet available.