The Police Are Trying to Tweet Their Way Into Your Heart

listen to ‘999 call made for Sir Alex Ferguson’ on Audioboo

(function() { var po = document.createElement("script"); po.type = "text/javascript"; po.async = true; po.src = "https://d15mj6e6qmt1na.cloudfront.net/assets/embed.js"; var s = document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

Yesterday, the Greater Manchester Police took time out from winding up fracking protesters and telling people about victims of anti-deaf hate crime to have a lol with their online followers. They said that a drunk man rang them up on Wednesday and "demanded to speak to Sir Alex Ferguson about last night's result" – if you missed it, Manchester United were dumped out of the League Cup by Sunderland on penalties. GMP even released an audio file of the conversation, which you can hear above.

While you might think this is just harmless fun helping to transmit a more serious message about not misusing 999, it does fit with a wider UK police initiative to harness the power of social media to seem less like bastards. And there's nothing particularly wrong with them wanting to come across more like good honest coppers from The Bill than, I don't know, grown-up angry nerds with body armour and guns. However, it seems worthwhile to take a look at their online activities as they attempt to navigate their way through a latest crisis in public confidence.

Last week, in another example of the police using social media to try to stop people hating them, Met Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe took to Twitter for a Q&A session. What could be more open and accountable than the Met’s top cop sitting in the digital stocks to catch the internet's rotten tomatoes?

Unfortunately, it wasn’t as simple as #askmetboss. Obviously, the police were able to pick and choose which questions they retweeted and answered and which they ignored. Questions that were ignored included:

Will the Police be keeping their "Kill first, lie later" policy in 2014? #askmetboss

— Speedloafer (@Speedloafer) January 15, 2014

How come when police tell you to do something they're frequently unable to say what law they're enforcing? #askmetboss

—HarryStopes(@HarryStopes)January 15, 2014

@metpoliceuk #askmetboss In the Duggan case offices agreed their statements before submitting them. Is that usual? Why is that tolerated?

— Rory Tregaskis (@RoTreg) January 15, 2014

Of course, flatly stonewalling any critical questions would be a very bad move in PR terms. A genuine engagement exercise involves tackling the hecklers straight on:

RT @GABaines: How often the the Police massage crime statistics? #askmetboss

— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) January 15, 2014

. @GABaines Don't believe we do. Stats can be wrong. It's complex area to explain. HMIC looking at this area this year. #askmetboss

— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) January 15, 2014

RT @yorkeboypaul: #askmetboss Y do you never back ur men,hesntsupposedtobpoliticalyetstandsoutsidecourt&never stands up for cops

— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) January 15, 2014

. @yorkeboypaul I'm proud of the people I lead and say so whenever possible. Not everyone hears clearly. #askmetboss

— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) January 15, 2014

So, they can create the appearance of genuine openness by answering critical, yet relatively tame, questions with platitudes, while ignoring the genuine zingers.

The Met have a history of influencing old media to shape stories, so perhaps this foray into Twitter is unsurprising. But that doesn't mean they've quite attuned themselves to the constant ebb and flow of new media just yet. Just hours after the jury of the Mark Duggan inquest arrived at the decision it was a lawful killing, the Met tweeted this:

Only 5 days left to get your votes in for the bravest act of police work last year. Vote now for your favourite http://t.co/ouvjJmw0dU

— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) January 8, 2014

It is unclear if the nominations included shooting an unarmed suspect twice, claiming self defence and briefing newspapers that he was a well-known gangster who fired first, the latter a claim that was later disproved.

Or attempting to sue journalists for libel when they published evidence of police officers smashing up a suspect’s car with baseball bats – an act which was deemed “excessive force” by a disciplinary investigation, but for which no police officers lost their jobs.

Or wrestling a PhD student on a protest to the ground before arresting him for obstruction and strip searching him, before paying him £20,000 in compensation to prevent a court trial after video evidence found the testimony of the officer to be false.

Or accusing a government minister of calling an officer a “pleb”, forcing him to resign before later admitting that you did not actually witness it.

Or the call for a water cannon after doubling the use of tasers in a year following video footage of an officer allegedly punching a student, for which the officer will receive no punishment. Boys will be boys.

Or infiltrating environmental groups with the names of dead children.

The Met’s Twitter Q&A only mentioned one of the apparent acts of misconduct that have dominated the headlines this week – Plebgate – and that was only to say an investigation was still underway. The questions regarding procedures of accountability such as revised police statements notably received no response. Rather than tackle those criticisms, the British Bobby is using Twitter to show that he or she too is hilarious:

Innovative parking solution or a close call - driver uninjured #police #exeter pic.twitter.com/RbHzh7ipzB

— Topsham Police (@TopshamPolice) January 3, 2014

Or caring:

Please retweet if you know anybody who has / works with children! pic.twitter.com/kGZ0Ee2tjr

— Sgt Ashley Rose (@MPSCanningTnSgt) January 3, 2014

Or cute:

Twitter is in many ways a dream for the police. People snitch on themselves – volunteering their movement, their thoughts and their friendship circles without the need for a clandestine surveillance programme. The flipside of this has been the platform’s democratising effect. “Twitter revolutions” was something of a misnomer, focusing on how people organise Molotov cocktail parties rather than why they want to do so in the first place, but social media has certainly had a role in holding power to account and even in toppling dictators.

But what happens when the tool is used by the state to deviate discussion? It looks like openness and engagement but in reality it's thinly veiled PR. Twitter might be emerging as a new beat where officers do their community engagement but transparency is not a tweet and accountability is more than a hashtag.

Follow Symeon on Twitter: @symeonbrown

More on the police:

Spending a Night in Tottenham After the Mark Duggan Inquest

I Went Stop and Searching in Soho with the London Met

The Metropolitan Police Are Out of Control