#myNYPD Twitter callout backfires for New York police department

[Syt]

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/23/mynypd-twitter-call-out-new-york-police-backfires

NYPD's Twitter feed deluged with images of brutal arrests and shooting victims after attempt to highlight best of officers' work

When the New York police department invited people to tweet pictures of their dealings with "New York's finest" with the hashtag #myNYPD, what could possibly go wrong?

The attempt at public outreach, however, backfired spectacularly when users flooded Twitter with hundreds of photos of police brutality during Occupy Wall Street, one of an 84-year-old man brutalised for jaywalking – and even a dog being frisked.

By midnight on Tuesday, more than 70,000 people had tweeted about police brutality, ridiculing the NYPD for a social media disaster and recalling the names of people shot dead by police.

Police officials declined to respond to questions about the comments, which were being posted at a rate of 10,000 an hour, or say who was behind the Twitter idea. But they did release a short statement.

"The NYPD is creating new ways to communicate effectively with the community," Kim Royster, an NYPD spokeswoman told the New York Daily News. "Twitter provides an open forum for an uncensored exchange and this is an open dialogue good for our city."

The request for pictures, on the @NYPDNews Twitter page, had said: "Do you have a photo w/ a member of the NYPD? Tweet us & tag it #myNYPD," the message read. "It may be featured on our Facebook."

It prompted a flood pictures of officers mistreating people and old newspaper headlines about unarmed people being shot dead by police. It also sparked similar hashtag trends – including #myLAPD – and attracted international attention.

Not all the posts were negative. JP Quinn, 40, tweeted a picture from inside the old Yankee Stadium with his brother Michael, 38, who is a detective in Brooklyn South. "I like when they make public efforts like this. It's a shame that it blew up like this," Quinn told the Daily News. "I just assumed it would be all roses, like whoever came up with that for the NYPD."

The NYPD tried to make the best of a botched job by retweeting all the favourable photos.

Last year, Wall Street giant JP Morgan was at the centre of a social media storm when it invited Twitter users to send questions to an executive using the hashtag #AskJPM. The bank was deluged with vitriol. More than 8,000 responses were sent within a six-hour period, two-thirds of which were negative.

[garbon]

When I saw this, I wasn't sure. Is officer asleep in first photo?

[Syt]

When I saw this, I wasn't sure. Is officer asleep in first photo?

There's a second picture of him from the front:



Is sleeping on the NY subway verboten?

[garbon]

I've never heard of such / plenty of people do it. Still as an officer seems problematic given that he appears to have a gun on him?

[Sheilbh]

Yeah I saw this on Twitter last night. What a PR triumph from the NYPD

[Syt]

I've never heard of such / plenty of people do it. Still as an officer seems problematic given that he appears to have a gun on him?

Yeah, I get that. But the guy in the tweet said he got ticketed for it.

[Syt]

Yeah I saw this on Twitter last night. What a PR triumph from the NYPD

I find it's  a case of "Duh, what did they expect?" It's the internet, after all.

[DGuller]

Hopefully they'll take a message out of this, and not just shut it down as a failed PR experiment.  In my experience, NYPD officers are the biggest unprofessional jerks by far out of all cops I've had contact with or seen in action personally, and I've never even had an encounter with them that was adversarial in any way.

[garbon]

I've never heard of such / plenty of people do it. Still as an officer seems problematic given that he appears to have a gun on him?

Yeah, I get that. But the guy in the tweet said he got ticketed for it.

Apparently you can get arrested for it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/07/nyregion/minor-offense-on-ny-subway-can-bring-ticket-or-handcuffs.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Though odd given that I've been on trains plenty of times with homeless individuals camped out on train.

[Syt]

Well, I guess it will depend on circumstances, mood of the officer, whether other passengers are around or not etc. etc.

It still seems weird, though, that you can get arrested for these things.

[Grey Fox]

Non-Irish cops are scums.

[garbon]

Well, I guess it will depend on circumstances, mood of the officer, whether other passengers are around or not etc. etc.

It still seems weird, though, that you can get arrested for these things.

Yeah sort of like a lot of regulations we have. In existence so they can hassle you if they want.

[DGuller]

For such a liberal city, NYC does have a pretty heavy-handed (and, let's face it, racially profiling) police force (unless you have a PBA card from your cop relative or friend, in which case you are immune from enforcement of all minor infractions, and sometimes not-so-minor).

[derspiess]

For such a liberal city, NYC does have a pretty heavy-handed (and, let's face it, racially profiling) police force (unless you have a PBA card from your cop relative or friend, in which case you are immune from enforcement of all minor infractions, and sometimes not-so-minor).

I'm sure that will change with the current mayor & will go back to being a crime-ridden shithole like it used to be.

[DGuller]

For such a liberal city, NYC does have a pretty heavy-handed (and, let's face it, racially profiling) police force (unless you have a PBA card from your cop relative or friend, in which case you are immune from enforcement of all minor infractions, and sometimes not-so-minor).

I'm sure that will change with the current mayor & will go back to being a crime-ridden shithole like it used to be.

I'm not surprised that an uninformed and, let's face it, stupid man like yourself buys into the fairy tails about the iron fist that saved New York, but unsurprisingly reality is usually more complicated than simple fairy tales for simple men.  Enforcing professional conduct doesn't come at a cost of increased crime (if anything, increased respect for police by law-abiding citizens is probably a good thing).  Turning a blind eye towards petty corruption like PBA cards or ticket fixing likewise doesn't lead to higher crimes.  And beside all of that, policing is always a compromise between safety and freedom, which implies that you can go too far in either direction.