We shouldn't be policing culture wars, says Met

Sir Mark Rowley, the Metropolitan police commissioner, said yesterday that officers should not be "policing toxic culture war debates" as the comedy writer Graham Linehan vowed to sue after his arrest over social media posts.

- Vikram Dodd, Daniel Boffey, Haroon Siddique

Rowley said "policing has been left between a rock and a hard place by successive governments", with the law offering officers no option but to investigate Linehan's tweets.

The 57-year-old, who co-created the TV show Father Ted, was arrested by five armed officers from the Met as he got off a flight on Monday at Heathrow after arriving from Arizona.

Linehan was arrested for allegedly inciting violence and was detained by officers, who are routinely armed at the airport.

In one of the three tweets cited by the police at the point of arrest, Linehan had written: "If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls."

In his statement, Rowley said the officers had reasonable grounds to believe an offence had been committed under the Public Order Act, but that he understood the concerns raised.

"While the decision to investigate and ultimately arrest the man was made within existing legislation which dictates that a threat to punch someone from a protected group could be an offence - I understand the concern caused by such incidents given differing perspectives on the balance between free speech and the risks of inciting violence in the real world," he said.

"Most reasonable people would agree that genuine threats of physical violence against an identified person or group should be acted upon by officers. Such actions can and do have serious and violent real-world implications.