Police go online in Dale farm gypsy row

Police are scouring social network websites to predict tactics in the battle for Dale Farm, Europe’s largest illegal gypsy site. Officers braced for the coming eviction at the six-acre compound near Basildon, Essex, learned from the August riots how sites such as Facebook and Twitter can be used to wrong-foot the authorities. Essex Police believes that in a worst case scenario there could be as many as 2,000 people on the site, including the 240 travellers living there, when the eviction begins, possibly as early as tomorrow. A police source said: “We would like this to go peacefully, but nobody believes that is going to be the case. We will be constantly examining websites such as Twitter and Facebook to make sure that if they are being used to encourage criminal activity we will be able to deal with it.”