The NYPD tried engaging their online audience with a fun, social-media-based campaign this past week, but wound up falling well short of its goal.
The campaign was launched via Twitter and based around the hashtag #myNYPD. The point of the program was to get users to post friendly photos of themselves with the City’s officers.
Now, if you’ve ever been on the Internet, you know how this is going to wind up going wrong. And wrong it went—way, way wrong.
Instead of a stream of friendly photos, the hashtag was adopted by users who instead posted images of police brutality.
By the next day, the #myNYPD hashtag became one of Twitter’s top trending terms.
Many of the photos taken were captured by professional photographers at incidents in the city, as opposed to the users’ own images.
In response to the anti-campaign, the NYPD issued the following statement:
“The NYPD is creating new ways to communicate effectively with the community. Twitter provides an open forum for an uncensored exchange and this is an open dialogue good for our city.”
NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton responded as well, saying:
“If anything, I kinda welcome the extra attention.”
Story via bbc.com
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