A warning has been made that fabricated information on Facebook is “feeding into the concerns” people have that anti-social behaviour is “prevalent” in Biddulph – and a call has made for the police to “fire a shot across the bows” of group administrators.
It followed comments on social media last week, as reported in the “Chronicle”, claiming a man was robbed at knifepoint by two men on Sainsbury’s car park on Wharf Road last weekend.
Staffordshire Police officers “trawled” cctv at the time the robbery was reported to have happened and found no evidence of any incident taking place and they said no-one has since come forward as a victim.
Following a large amount of social media comments in response to the robbery claim, police posted to confirm that it was false.
Concern about the Facebook post reached the council chamber of Biddulph Town Hall during a town council meeting last Tuesday, which the police had been due to attend.
After remarking that it was “unfortunate” officers couldn’t attend as they’d had to respond to an emergency, Coun Kevin Jackson said the alleged incident posted on Facebook had caused an “uproar” in the town saying: “It turns out the police have checked it out and it was fake.” Coun Jackson said he would have asked police what action could have been taken against whoever wrote the original post: “I’m sure there must be some sort of offence – malicious communication or whatever.
“I was going to ask whether the police were going to investigate because there must be some way of tracing it back to somebody. Someone’s got to be a member of ‘Biddulph Chatter’ to contribute to it. If nothing else just to fire a shot across the bows.”
Coun Jackson told the meeting: “This sort of thing is really irresponsible. If you’ve got young children that were out around that time you’d think ‘God, where are they?’ I think it did cause a lot of discomfort in a lot of areas.”
He said he wanted the police to inform the town council if they were going to investigate it and whether the perpetrator had been spoken to.
Town mayor Coun Nigel Yates, who chaired the meeting, agreed and said two potential offences sprung to mind.
He said: “One is the Malicious Communications Act and the other one is the old one of wasting police time, calling police out to something which doesn’t actually exist and takes them away from the job that they should be doing.”
Coun Yates added: “What it does is feed into the concerns which a lot of people have about the anti-social behaviour which is prevalent within the town.”
He gave a recent example, saying: “I was out with Coun (Jim) Garvey last night and a car came down the wrong way through the one way system at high speed, obviously completely oblivious to the fact there were people around.
“So we have got an issue, but for people to actually compound that issue with false allegations, which create uncertainty in the community, is just not acceptable.”
Added Coun Yates: “It is a shame the police aren’t here because there is a wider discussion to be had both on that and obviously the other incidents.” In September, the “Chronicle” reported on a town council meeting where police admitted said that they had to “get lucky” to catch motorcyclists causing “absolute chaos” in Biddulph.
A Staffordshire Police spokesperson said on Monday: “We’re continuing to progress our enquiries in response to the post that was made.”
(Photo:Nazar Zherebtsov / Dreamstime).
