NYPD Twitter Campaign Goes Horribly Wrong

I’m sure it seemed like a great idea. The NYPD asked New Yorkers to pose with NYPD officers and post their heart-warming photographs to twitter with the hashtag #myNYPD. I guess the geniuses in their social media department thought this would elicit Mayberry style images of neighborhood cops being heroes. Well, this isn’t the 50s. Or Mayberry.

What happened instead was that the #myNYPD hashtag was absolutely flooded with images of police brutality. Captions for images were almost all entirely snarky. Though there were a couple straightforward images along the lines the NYPD had desired, these were completely overshadowed by bad PR.

mynypd Free massagesAgain, this puts into focus the fact that the next generation is far less trusting of authority than the previous one. Most Millennials have no great love for the police and no great confidence that the police, or any other arms of the civil government, are actually there for the public good.

mammogram myNYPD

Some of this has to do with the fact that the internet capitalizes on scandal and tragedy—so stories of police brutality are more likely to go viral than that story about the one police officer that helped Grandma get her cat out of a tree. But the sheer number of these kind of stories is disturbing. Even if they were not the norm for all police officers, they indicate that the culture within law enforcement has shifted from protection and service to brutality and abuse.

The best PR campaign for the police would be a systemic overhaul of their culture and tactics. Stop shooting dogs, for one. Stop forcibly entering people’s homes and searching people’s cars for spurious reasons. Stop buying armored vehicles. Stop lying in wait to give out tickets. Respond to emergency calls and find and stop real violent criminals. That would do so much more for you than any twitter campaign ever could. Especially this one. Ouch.

174 responses

  1. Too funny! These are the geniuses that manage to shoot more then a dozen bystanders and miss the suspects in most engagements.

    • maybe they dont have enough ammo to practice , the feds bought it all , pretty soon they will be like barney fife with one round that he keeps in his shirt pocket

      • the problem is that the mayor past and present don’t like to hear guns going off, so the cops just point and say “bang, bang” when they are on the police range, so they never really get the feel of a live round going down the tube, it is surprising that more people haven’t been shot or killed.

  2. If they do TOO much they’re sued..If they don’t do enough they’re sued!!!
    Parents AND the Socialist Dept of Ed have destroyed the respect for authority COMPLETELY.
    Kids can NOW cuss out ANYONE or worse. They have NO RESPECT for anything including themselves. I hate to think of what this country is going to look like in 10 years.
    And remember the pictures only show a moment in time. None of us know WHAT if anything these people did.

    • THAT I will agree with. Unfortunately, as a 40+ year old Veteran, I have had experiences with cops – especially some young ones – where I came very close to some … creative civil disobedience. My fave example: watching an airport “cop” frisk a 90-year old Medal of Honor recipient at SEATAC in 2003.

  3. Another Emily Littella Moment

    OOOPS

    If it’s all not sweetness and light
    Hubris can really bite
    If you give ‘em a chance
    They’ll do a war dance
    And send you up as high as a kite

    ….nnnn..’o^o’..uu!u…..algie
    Illegitimi nOn carborundum

  4. I saw two dwarf morbidly obese women cops in the subway yesterday. Would’ve been an awesome post…

  5. The police officers aren’t doing anything wrong under the circumstances.
    They were likely outnumbered. They are subject to assault and personal injuries that could end their careers or worse.
    I’m sure the little darlings depicted were given sufficient warnings which they ignored.
    You can be critical all you want but then again, YOU aren’t the ones running toward danger & mayhem.
    YOU dial 911 and whine and plea for HELP . . . .

  6. Don’t laugh to hard people! The militarization of our PD is by Federal Government design… By the way, would like a little more funding for more of those hollow point bullets or those tank that you need to control the people asks the Feds? Oh don’t think bad things aren’t coming our way soon when your government is armed to the teeth with weapons that kill, not protect! And your government no longer even bothers to put up the fake fasade of trying to listen to WE THE PEOPLE!

    • July 2013: Three PALATES of 5.56 and 9mm hollow points in an FDA warehouse down on the waterfront in Detroit. What is FDA doing with close to 400,000 rounds of ammunition in Detroit?

      • They are waiting for gang members to steal them so they can say they had nothing to do with the mass killings.

        • Let me add another piece to the puzzle. Department of Homeland Security is now “supplementing” Detroit Police patrols under the justification of “Detroit is a major border”. By what authority is DHS acting as police on the streets of an American city?

          So: DHS acting as “police”, literally getting people used to federal police agents on public streets plus over 400,000 rounds of ammunition in a FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION office.

          I don’t know about you, but I am not much for coincidences.

          • not any different than the BLM, a management company assuming the powers of law enforcement. and hiring paid mercenarys to do their dirty work.

          • Or the Department Of Education. They too have a militarized enforcement agency.

          • Sorry. It not the Department of education anymore. It the department of Brainwashing our youth.
            Bet this was never shown in a class room.

            Battle of Manila Video Wow prisoner in U.S.T

            Terrific story.

          • Like killing an innocent man’s cattle and tazering his son. Glad it didn’t turn out like Ruby Ridge!

          • “it’s not over yet,” even tho harry ried is almost as big a liar as barry the illegal i do believe that this is one time he is telling he truth, if mr. bundy gets away with this you will see more and more people who have been treated like this start to stand up for what is right, and not what some self serving bureaucrat says, so yes i do think “it is not over yet.”

          • Under Posse Comitatus, the military is prohibited from engaging in police activities so why are DHS personnel doing street police work any different? This is just another foot in the door for big brother to take over all functions of state and local governments. Katie bar the door…

          • Did anybody think to ask or get the press to ask why all the ammo? Maybe we should start hounding the press for answers instead of the politicians! Unless they already know, they have to be curious!

          • Nobody knows it is there. A buddy of mine who handles legal documents but happens to be a champion shotgunner noticed it when he was making a delivery for a case.

          • Our so-called press has its own version of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell! I do manage to get info but it is virtually never from MSM.

          • The Press doesn’t give a DAMN; they’ve been paid by Obama to stick their noses elsewhere.

          • What press, Jay? They go to school to become tabloid reporters, teleprompter-readers of scripted/censored news. The day of investigative reporting is long gone.

          • Carefully, and vocally. I am a very strong advocate of “No Incumbent, Ever”. The phrase “Civil Servant” needs to come back in vogue.

          • let’s hope we even get to vote in November, or that barry the illegal doesn’t just void the vote if he doesn’t like it, remember he has a pen and a phone, and we have a bunch of gutless wimpie girly men politicians who will not say shit if their mouths were full of it, and most of the time it is.

          • Remember over 50 % of the voters are on the Federal sugar tit. Then we have the gutless “Monkey see, Monkey do” Republicans who haven’t done anything in 20 years bur shit and fall back into it. Look at the climb of the national debt of that time. A total disgrace. Now it has become insane. Hay Barbara Large! did I get my grammar right?

      • Dearborn isn’t all that far; probably ammo for the “peaceful” Muslims who need defense against terrorists! Just ask CAIR!

  7. Whoever came up with the idea for this campaign clearly had no idea about the true nature of the NYPD. Or maybe the department is so delusional they think they aren’t doing anything wrong.

  8. First of all, let’s get one thing straight. Police don’t get cats out of trees, firefighters do. Police assault donuts…

  9. Maybe this is an opportunity. When you see a cop, parked on some deathly boring assignment to watch for neighborhood speeders or “suspicious people”, make the human contact and greet him/her, and thank them for their service to the community. Forcing young cops to start to think of members of the community as people like them or their families, instead of possible criminal perpetrators, will make them think twice before overreacting.

  10. Same police problems everywhere in the US now. We can’t trust our police and yet they want big salaries and big perks for doing very little. I see drivers stopped for very little, and yet big crime goes on and on and the police don’t do a thing about it. Most cops are overweight and couldn’t run or be efficient in their jobs. I know when I was in charge of testing cops and firepersons, most could not pass the running or fence climbing tests at all. They think they are special and forget they are our employees. Unfortunately, Obama has been working on militarizing our cops during his terms so they will fight and/or kill us when he commands. We, the People need to wake up and change things or forget completely our freedoms and lifestyle.

      • The cop force of my town is made of of like 12 people and most of the time only half of them are there, The cops here are nice people who actualy do what they are suposed to do.

      • I was once stipped by the only police woman in the police force for being a reckless jogger and she was very hard on me and forced me to tell her where i lived or whatever

      • Crayz, I have been stopped by cops after concerned citizens saw me jogging recklassly like 2xs one of the times i had ridden my bike halfway to my destination then u had to oark my bike dye to busy streets and i jogged

      • And one tiem the police woman forced me to get into her car that smelled horrid and was too cramped and the cop car had NO AC AT ALL!! I was driven back to where i parked my bike

      • There are bad people in every profession. I am a minister and I know that there are bad preachers. I bet everyone could name a few. I live in Texas and I know a lot of people hate Texans. (especially those who have never been here) I lived a very non law enforcement life for 20+ years. In my many dealings with the police departments during that time I can say that I only met one cop that should not have been on the force and I reported him. He was fired two days later. I don’t know if it was because of me and it really does not matter, a bad cop was gone. Did I meet cops that talked ugly to me? Yes and it was because I started talking that way to them. I changed my life or God did for the better, you be the judge.
        Through a strange set of coincidences after I sobered up I was hired by the County where I live and after being employed for a few months I was transferred Into the Sheriff’s Department to work. I retired from there 32 years later. I have seen bad cops get busted and our Internal Affairs Department got rid of a few. On the whole I could not be any more proud of a law enforcement agency than The Dallas County Sheriff’s Department. I do not know how they are now but as of 2012 they were the best.

        • The Texas Rangers as a rule are good guys I used to do business with them in rebuilds and repairs of their weapons, every once in a while there is a bad apple in the bunch….Normally a phone call to their superiors does the trick.

          • I agree the Texas Rangers are a very professional respectful group. I have a couple of friends who are now retired Rangers.
            I also had a good friend that was a US Marshal. He was a great guy before cancer took his life.

        • Sheriffs are different. Sheriffs are the only law enforcement officers in the whole country who are elected by the citizens. They have what Sarah Palin calls a “servant’s heart,” in that they want to serve, and they do a tremendous job of it almost always.

          • Agreed completely! In 2011 I made 26 citizens arrest with my local Sherrifs department in South Mississippi. The intersection was a trouble area and hosted drug deals….simply because the hoods could see the police coming from three different directions coming from as much as mile and a half away at night. So I would apprehend and hold them until they could arrive. Drug dealers realize they are in trouble when looking down the barrel of an AK-47 and it is not in the hands of an law enforcement officer! Until today the drug trade at that intersection is very very low!

  11. Ask your self one question. Would you stand to lose more if you came home and found a burglar coming out of your house or a cop. I think I would prefer a burglar. He might steal my lap top or stereo but at least I won’t be going to court, or facing time in Jail or having to hire an expensive lawyer. The truth is there are so many regulations and laws that any cop entering your property can find something that you have broken the law over. I have called the police to my house when a person was stealing my refrigerator, I said refrigerator, The cop came in about an hour, but I was able to hold the man stealing my frig till he got there. I thought well ok nothing to do here but take the man to jail. The robber said he bought the frig from me and showed the cop a recite for a hundred dollars that he wrote himself. I told the cop I never gave him the recite and my name wasn’t even on the recite, The Cop said can I prove he didn’t buy the frig. needless to say I became angry. the next thing I know the cop told the thief he could leave with the frig. That is a true story, I know hard to believe. The cop then started to admonish me to stay calm. He even threaten to take me to jail if I didn’t calm down.

    • It is almost as if you would have been better off to have shot your refrigerator bandit to death, and then told the police that he had broken into your house and was trying to attack you with large household appliances.

      • I caught him in the drive way as I came home.
        I actually had another incidence where I caught a person empting my tool box from my truck. I had the cell phone ready to dial, but decided handle it on my own. I tackled him from behind when he didn’t see me coming. stood him up and broke his nose with my fist. I swung several times more , but he was dodging pretty good by then. I drug him to his truck made him carry my tools back and when he wasn’t looking I punched him again in the nose. Believe it or not his wife was in the cab of their van begging me not to hurt him anymore. My fist was sore the next day, but at least I got my stuff back. I was 55 at the time, but I caught him by surprise.

        • i prefer to after holding them at gunpoint, taking a baseball bat and a couple of full swings between the legs. that’s punishment!

      • Joe, I in 2004 protected a granny being robbed on the subway in Brooklyn….Everything on camera as I found out in court. Three young outstanding citizens of the black community decided that granny had funds that needed to be redistributed. When they took her money I considered getting to them but I was in the other extreme of the car. However when they began to beat her, and request more money…that drew the line. I decided to intervene, I had to knock one out, and broke the hand of the second when he decided to pulled a knife on me. The third escaped in the upset. I picked the knife up with a piece of shopping bag from the floor of the car…..None of the New Yorkers ever offered a hand in any way!
        The Metro Police arrived and I tried to hand them the knife with the bag I used to picked it up (I guess I am just a dumb Southerner) they pulled their weapons on me beat me to the ground (Metro cops) and handcuffed me, while granny was shouting…He save me! Stop you have the wrong guy!….I spent two nights in jail and was handled by the cops worse than we handle prisoners of war!
        Even after viewing the video they kept changing the charges and after 8 court appearances and 6 months of my life they finally dropped the case. Now why would they ever wonder if or why people do not like them?

        • and now you have a record with the FBI so if you get stopped and a check is run the report will come back stating where you were arrested and why, but it will not say that your case was dismissed, or that you were found not guilty, just that you were arrested, so what do you think will happen when such a bogus report is received, most likely you will get to spend a few more days in the lock up, especially if you happen to fit the general description of some wanted criminal.

          • sc….You are perfectly correct….but nothing is worth becoming a sheeple! Life will cost you whether you do something or not….so doing something is the only rightful way! God is still in charge.
            I have been locked up twice since 2004 and it was only for protecting other citizens and myself. Both accounts in NYC.
            I left the work I had there and that State of insanity (NY) and have been blessed since then.

          • That is completely untrue. I had a bogus charge made against me and was put in jail. 18 days later I was released on bail. it took almost a year to go to court and when I did 5 minutes before the trial the judge threw out the case. All charges were dismissed. I now have a concealed carry license and had to pass the FBI finger print and back ground checks in Texas. No problem what so ever I had my license within 10 days.

  12. It does not help that police in a lot of cities have gone from “Officer Friendly” to “That F***ing Pig”. Cops these days are not the cops of yesterday by a long shot. When I was a kid in high school, the sheriff would roll up on us having a bonfire in a field at 2am, make us pour out our beer, and send us home. They might take any unopened bottles, but that was as brutal as they got. Nowadays, they’ll cuff kids, arrest parents, press charges, and destroy the rest of some 16-year old’s life just because the winning team had a kegger after the homecoming game. Cops have not done very much to endear themselves to the public of late.

    • Your username is Ag.com and since AG is shot for American Girl Dolls do you like American girl Dolls??

        • Sorry for the creepy comment. But i realy did thing your username mean American Girl not American Greetings. I’m just a teennon spring break with nothing much to do

          • AmericanGovernment.com, actually. Shouldn’t you be out partying on Spring Break? Holy crap, times have changed…

          • I actualy am getting ready for a long needed trip to the beach. I am supposed to finish up some HW before the trip. Can’t do much outside of the home I can’t drive yet. Plus I don’t want to take the chance of ruining my dream of being a teacher by partying out late instead of working on school.

          • Perhaps in summer break i can learn to drive and then take some girl out to a dance. But right now I need to eat before I die of starvation. Also i don’t wanna get busted by the cops for breaking the law so thats why i dont party cause it could be my ruin. Plus, all of my friends and my girlfriend don’t go paryting.

          • If you truly are as young as you say you are, I would like to offer you a small bit of advice as you dig around on these politically charged boards: Read everything. Listen to everyone. Learn the art of analysis. Think critically. Above all, live.

      • Evan, you should apologize for that really ignorant comment. It would have taken you 4 seconds to figure out that AG.com is American Greeting, not American Girl.

        Think before you act. Maybe your mama didn’t raise you right?

        • I thought AG stood for agriculture. There are surely a lot of people griping about what the feds are allowing monsanto to by allowing GMO foods into our food supply. They are destroying our crops and our farmers to boot! There’s a campaign to STOP MONSANTO!!!

  13. I know that police bad behavior has always been around. I do believe that their attitude has really gone much worse in the last few years, It seems to go hand in hand with our present administration showing their disregard to the rule of law.

  14. Typical progressive thinking. They can’t think past the nose on their face, or of the unintended circumstances that might arise. They wonder why they are considered stupid.

  15. Why are you all so hard on the NYPD? Why I have witnessed them even giving supervision and protecting civilian activities! Like watching drug deals go do and then getting charity from those they oversaw the transaction for!
    The NYPD is as a rule is more criminal than the majority of people they handcuff, beat, and or arrest!

  16. Cops now feel allowed to shoot first and ask questions later. A development of a Marxist State requires police to shove the steel boot down on freedoms and liberties. No longer are search warrants used. If police want to search you, your car, or house, they can do so unabated. By the time the Marxist in Chief establishes his Puppet Master Valerie Jarrett’s Marxist State, it will all be over except the crying. Oh, and the blood of millions of citizens flowing in the streets. Right now, America is just in the “warm-up stage.

  17. The cop’s job has gotten tougher, that is to say for sure. The trouble is cops are taking it out on the average person who is guilty of nothing. I am sorry your job has gotten so dangerous, but brutalizing the public is not the solution. In fact it is making your job harder.

  18. I was told by a police officer in Long Island….If you have to call the cops, because you have been attacked…..It is best to lay down and act wounded or really dazed when you hear them coming, because if you are conscious and able they will assume you are the criminal…especially in NYPD zones!

  19. Police brutality has gotten worse – but so has the public.

    Mayberry was a small town, populated by White Christians. The Civil Wrongs “legislathus tion” had not taken effect, enshrining the legal and thus social privilege of non-Whites over Whites, and turning the majority population into secon, then
    third, and next bottom of the barrel status. The Hart-Celler Immigration DISASTER had not gone into full swing, flooding the USA with hostile, aggressive invading COLONIZERS, form alien and UN-ASSIMABLE countries/cultures. The disastrous and deranging effects of Cultural Marxism were nowhere to be found.

    Look at those pics, Whitey. Never mind the cops. Note the Mestizo gangbanger. Think he’s going to carry Aunt Bea’s groceries into the house, as a courtesy, and expect nothing more than a smile, in return? See the screaming Negro, atop the police car? He’ll make a wonderful next-door neighbor. You’ll never have to lock your doors! See that shreiking blonde, with the weird hair? She’ll make a marvelous baby sitter, for little Opie.

    Right?

    We are not ever going back to Mayberry, folks. If you are White – you will be lucky to die a natural death, in the coming decades. And your children will curse your name, for your “tolerance of diversity”.

  20. Police statistics show in 1970 there were three accidental shooting to
    every 1.3 civilian accidental shootings. Now in 2010 the ratio has
    changed it is 11.6 police accidental shootings to every 1 civilian
    accidental shootings. They call it accidental shootings…but it is
    actually wrongful death. These statistics changed very rapidly when the
    Police forces bowed down to the federal substity requirements in
    2000….meaning college course graduates in required subjects, and
    preferred out of area applicants. (This to allow them to infiltrate with
    the liberal minded officers) This is a national statistic however if
    you access the statistics from the “Gun Free” zones the statistics are
    even higher! Yet they want to disarm civilians?
    FYI: NYPD is famous for shooting by standers!

  21. Now they see why the 2nd amendment is so important. And our rights to protest. The mayor wants to make things better, quit picking on the citizens and rein in your gestapo police force. The laws are not pick and choose!

  22. Maybe I missed something but where is anyone being treated in a brutal manner? It looks like they are making arrests and the perps are not cooperating. If someone resists a lawful arrest the police have to cuff them I don’t see anything out of the ordinary in those pictures. Can someone please tell me what these cops did wrong?

  23. Hey that crap happens all over the country, but NYC dwellers deserve far more than they get. That city is a cesspool !!

  24. The NYPD brought this kind of stuff on to themselves so let them deal with it. They preach to the people to vote for them and vote demoncrapic, well now it turned on their asses, good for the idiots.

  25. My Respect and Trust of cops Left a few years ago.Seems all they want to do is Intimidate,Brutalize,or just flat out shoot someone for just disagreeing with them or Question what their doing.No they have become German style brown shirted jack booted goose stepping thug Cowards that are so afraid of anyone for Little or NO reason, then they shoot folk’s and claim they tried to shoot them first (After they Plant a Gun on the person after they have shot them) I Will Never call a cop for Any Reason.

  26. Stop escalating situations and shooting a developmentally challenged adolescent when his parents called the police for assistance and two other cops already had the situation under control . Did that idiot cop every get charged? There have been so many terrible incidents in this past year, that it’s difficult to remember all of them, but it seems the caliber of police officers has declined and some appear to be thugs. No wonder people have lost their trust.

  27. The author mentions the suspicions of the Millenials, but he left out the convictions of the Boomers who see law enforcement as the the new Gestapo Storm Troopers.

  28. This is the scene that is happening all over AMERIKA, thank’s to the new Hitler’s “transformation” with the help of his “civilian army” and the results of his 2012 campaign slogan “vote for me and get revenge”! Yes, those of you on the Left, elections have consequences – your seeing them: police state, ruined economy, ruined military, ruined health care, ruined foriegn policy, ruined middle class, but a ressurrected THIRD WORLD TOTALITARIAN OLIGARCHY! Gee, thanks alot, A-HOLES!

  29. You have to love the creativity and cleverness of these citizens using this against them……this was the funniest story I have heard in a while….this is what happens when citizens work together to bring out the truth.

  30. This reminds me of the new “see something say something” the Feds are promoting at gun stores. Watch as thousands of anonymous callers report the license plates of “suspicious people” and it turns out they are reporting the plates of Police cars, license plates from the court house employee parking lots and federal offices.
    How could that possibly go wrong ?

  31. Cops have a dirty job – one I would NEVER take on. But yes, the public image of police is one of fear – and sometimes, loathing! Giving out parking tickets and vehicle moving violations by those ‘fearlessly dedicated to stopping crime’ is a joke! More time spent on patrolling for REAL criminals would be proper time spent. However, last time you went to court on a moving violation? PACKED with people who MUST give them MONEY! IT’s a RACKET – and a proven money-maker for so many towns, cities, municipalities – it is a CASH COW and will NEVER be abandoned.
    So much for ‘law and order’.

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