Bristol Rovers: Police investigate Mark Little racist abuse on social media
- Published
Mark Little joined Bristol Rovers after being released by Bolton Wanderers in June 2019
Police are investigating a racist message sent to Bristol Rovers full-back Mark Little on social media.
Little, 32, tweeted a screenshot on Sunday of an abusive response to a photo he had originally posted on his Instagram account on 4 January.
The account belonging to the responder has since been deleted.
Avon & Somerset Police confirmed they have contacted the club and are also planning to take a full statement from Little later.
"There is no place in sport or society for racism. Racism and discrimination will not be tolerated at Bristol Rovers," the club posted on their own Twitter account.
Little's experience came on the same weekend that Chelsea centre-back Antonio Rudiger and Manchester United Women forward Lauren James revealed they have received racist abuse on social media.
Manchester United defender Axel Tuanzebe has also been subjected to two separate incidents of racist abuse in the past two weeks.
Insp Rob Millican from Avon & Somerset Police confirmed they will be contacting Instagram to try and obtain the details of the account holder.
Elsewhere, Metropolitan Police said they arrested a man on Monday in connection with a "number of racist and hateful" Twitter posts relating to Chelsea.
An investigation was launched towards the end of last year after Chelsea identified the tweets.
The 21-year-old was detained following his arrest in Retford, Nottinghamshire and he has since been released while police enquiries continue.
The Football Association has called for government action to bring in legislation "so that this abuse has real-life consequences".
World players' union FIFPRO echoed that call by highlighting a Professional Footballers' Association (PFA) study that suggests more than 40 per cent of players in England are victims of targeted racist attacks online.
"Football players who have publicly and eloquently denounced online abuse have helped to highlight the serious and repetitive nature of these attacks," general secretary Jonas-Baer Hoffman said.
"All of these players will receive our continuous support to call out the lack of care and adequate protection provided by social media companies.
"We now urgently need both national and international authorities to step in and collaborate to make these companies clean up their platforms and remove the stream of abhorrent discrimination that continues to contaminate both public channels and personal lives on every continent."
The UK government has threatened social media companies with "large fines" which could amount to "billions of pounds" if they fail to tackle abuse.
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Both Facebook, which owns Instagram, and Twitter have previously stated they are committed to eradicating abuse on their platforms.