The ongoing NYPD-on-Twitter experiment, which peaked this week with a picture of an Elmo in handcuffs that it took ten undercover cops to arrest (293 RTs!), is not a free for all. Instead, precinct commanders are undergoing very strict social-media training, beginning, The Wall Street Journal reports, with a “What is Twitter” PowerPoint presentation.
’Good ideas: Dad humor. Using hashtags. Animal rescues.
“A lot of people seem to like when you post kittens or dogs,” said Detective Jeff Thompson.
As Gothamist notes, that lesson certainly went heeded, although results so far have been middling:
Bad ideas: Using military time. Seeming insensitive. Falling for scams.
“If a Nigerian prince contacts you on Twitter, please do not engage,” said lead trainer Martha Norrick, the NYPD’s director of citizen and workforce engagement who worked for President Barack Obama’s campaign.
Ms. Norrick displayed what she considered an ideal tweet posted by a police precinct in San Francisco: “Officers just arrested a naked man in the bison paddock in GG Park. The bison seemed unimpressed.”
“It is the perfect kind of funny,” she said. “This naked man is not named, we are not sharing a photo of him. Do not share photos of naked men on Twitter.”
So when a woman inevitably shows up without clothes, the department will know whom to blame.
