The commissioner of the New York Police Department was unruffled by the ugly photos of police violence that flooded Twitter yesterday in response to a tweet from the agency. "I kind of welcome the attention," Commissioner Bill Bratton told the New York Daily News. "We really broke the numbers yesterday."
NYPD commissioner responds to Twitter hashtag disaster: ‘I welcome the attention’
Just before 2PM, the @NYPDnews account tweeted, “Do you have a photo w/ a member of the NYPD? Tweet us & tag it #myNYPD. It may be featured on our Facebook.” The hashtag rapidly turned into a “bashtag,” as the Associated Press put it, with Occupy Wall Street and other activists tweeting their unflattering photos of cops using violence. Soon, #myNYPD became one of Twitter’s top trending topics.
Yours truly. RT @NYPDnews: Do you have a photo w/ a member of the NYPD? Tweet us & tag it #myNYPD. pic.twitter.com/olAxGgU4Hs
— Justin Wedes (@justinwedes) April 22, 2014 Reportedly, no one has been punished for the social media disaster that highlighted an organization with a history of abuse. The photos are "old news," Bratton said. "They’ve been out there for a long time." Despite some reports of internal dissent, the agency has no plans to stop using the #myNYPD hashtag or social media. To be fair, there were a number of photos on the hashtag of citizens posing peacefully with NYPD members.
The NYPD isn’t the first to suffer backlash from an ill-advised hashtag. In 2012, McDonald’s had to pull a Twitter advertising campaign when tweeters starting writing on its #McDStories hashtag with jokes about marijuana and diabetes.
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