Savills suspends manager over racist tweet as social media firms enter hot water
Estate agent Savills has suspended a manager after he posted a racist tweet after England’s Euro final defeat on Sunday.
The investigation is now being spearheaded by the Greater Manchester Police, as the manager claimed his Twitter account was hacked.
People took to Twitter to share the employee’s LinkedIn page which showed where he worked and the now-deleted comment.
“Savills abhors and has zero tolerance to any form of racism and racial discrimination and is appalled by the racist comments in these tweets,” the estate agent wrote on Twitter.
“A full investigation will be carried out in regards to this unacceptable incident.”
One Savills client threatened to stop using the estate agents if it tolerated the racist behaviour.
The racist abuse directed at England players of colour, Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho, has been condemned by prime minister Boris Johnson and the Football Association (FA).
The Metropolitan Police also said it is investigating the abuse and said “it will not be tolerated”.
The FA said in a statement: “We could not be clearer that anyone behind such disgusting behaviour is not welcome in following the team.
“We will do all we can to support the players affected while urging the toughest punishments possible for anyone responsible.
“We will continue to do everything we can to stamp discrimination out of the game, but we implore government to act quickly and bring in the appropriate legislation so this abuse has real-life consequences.
Social media
The FA urged social media companies to step up in their actions against abusive users, advising them to “ban abusers from their platforms, gather evidence that can lead to prosecution and support making their platforms free from this type of abhorrent abuse.”
Culture secretary Oliver Dowden also called on tech companies to clamp down on abuse, saying: “I share the anger at appalling racist abuse of our heroic players.
“Social media companies need to up their game in addressing it and, if they fail to, our new Online Safety Bill will hold them to account with fines of up to 10 per cent of global revenue.”
Twitter said racist abuse had “absolutely no place” on its platform, adding that it had removed over 1,000 tweets and suspended a number of accounts.
A spokesperson for Facebook said: “No one should have to experience racist abuse anywhere, and we don’t want it on Instagram.
“We quickly removed comments and accounts directing abuse at England’s footballers last night and we’ll continue to take action against those that break our rules.”