The sick messages that landed a Twitter troll in jail

A Twitter troll who bombarded police with vile abuse has been jailed for four years.

David Bitton sent 600 homophobic, anti-Semitic, and other abusive messages to the force and other organisations.

They included threats to Greater Manchester Police dog handlers – telling them: ‘I want a police dogs head on a stick’.

Detectives branded the social media messages ‘horrific, threatening and narrow-minded’ and said that a four-year sentence was ‘entirely justified’.

Bitton, 40, of Grosvenor Road in Altrincham , was locked up at Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court on Friday after pleading guilty to 13 separate charges of sending racist and threatening communications.

An investigation was launched and Bitton was identified as the suspect. He was arrested and when interviewed said he had only written the tweets in order to gain followers, and deleted them soon after.

In one tweet he said: “I want a police dogs head on a stick.”

He also posted: “There is no 1 I carnt find.”

He then sent another tweet saying: “Including every police officer in Manchester. i already have all dog handlers addresses.”

Det Con David Stevenson from Greater Manchester Police’s Trafford Borough said: “Bitton tried to say that he didn’t mean what he had written and he was only craving attention and followers, but the contents of what was in some of his tweets was of such a horrific, threatening and narrow-minded nature that today’s sentence is entirely justified.

“Bitton will spend the next four years thinking about his actions and how they have affected the people they were aimed at.”

Manchester Evening News