NYPD Sending Their Best Cops To Twitter School To Learn All About Common Sense
from the if-you-need-the-schooling... dept
I’d say it’s been pretty well established at this point that the NYPD sucks at Twitter. Occasionally they get it right and engage with the public in a meaningful way, but too often NYPD officers put things on Twitter that can only serve to cause the public to question their judgement. Insensitivity, racism, and otherwise crass behavior doesn’t make the NYPD look all that good, of course, so the top brass has a solution. They’re going to review their hiring practices to make sure they’re hiring good, level-headed men and women to put on the uniform and protect the public. Hahahahaha, just kidding, they’ve decided to send some of their officers to “Twitter school” instead.
After a series of online gaffes — including a joke tweet about a dead woman and a hashtag that became a laughingstock — the NYPD is forcing top officers to take a course in Twitter. “USE COMMON SENSE” reads a memo handed out to the commanders at the first training session at John Jay College.
Yes, police are going to a formal class in order to learn how to use Twitter in a manner consistent with common sense. That appears to indicate that common sense isn’t all that common amongst NYPD officers, which should probably be setting off alarm bells in everyone’s brain. The kind of person that doesn’t know they shouldn’t make fun of dead members of the public they’re supposed to be protecting and serving probably aren’t the kind of people I really want walking around with a gun in the first place.
The course is designed to prevent embarrassments like a tweet sent by Capt. Thomas Harnisch of Harlem last month in which he made light of the death of a woman who fell onto the subway tracks at Union Square while using an iPad.
“Let me guess, driver’s fault right?” he wrote over his personal account in a tweet directed at a safe-streets advocacy group.
Lovely. It’s not that a single incident like this was particularly egregious, or that it prevents Harnisch from doing his job. The problem is that when the inability to act appropriately is such a pandemic across the police force that formal training on not acting like a jackass is warranted, the public might better be served by excising said jackasses from the police ranks entirely.
Filed Under: nypd, social media
Companies: twitter
Comments on “NYPD Sending Their Best Cops To Twitter School To Learn All About Common Sense”
It's NOT just twitter.
They lack manners just about everywhere.
Re: It's NOT just twitter.
How dare that plebe question the authority of Judge Dredd.
Respect mah authoritah!!!
Common sense is not common in general.
Alternatively, common sense is incredible stupidity, and what people mean the say is to exercise good sense.
one word describes this all
“UGH”
general public relations principles
It seems like it’s not the regular policemen, but their officers, who are being sent to “Twitter school” – as it were. More than likely, it’s not really about how to use Twitter, but about general public relations principles.
And it’s Techdirt’s fault. Because sites like Techdirt routinely expose the dark side of the police establishment, they are being forced to counter this with ‘positive’ propaganda/PR. At taxpayer expense, of course.
I used to wonder why it seemed all bureaucrats and officials sounded alike when speaking to the public, always giving annoyingly long-winded non-answers to simple questions. Maybe there are schools where these precise techniques are taught.
what do expect from people that treat those they are charged with protecting with open contempt.
If citizens do not start fawning over a cop and treating them like a god they get intimidated and harassed at best. Arrested and or shot/murdered at worst.
Is that right?
There’s something odd about that statement: If NYPD has to send its top cops to school to learn common sense…well, what hope do we have of common sense from its lower cops?
Explains a few things…
Re: Is that right?
I’m reminded of the Ford Prefect/Arthur Dent exchange in part 6 of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy radio series –
Ford – What are you doing?
Arthur – I’m trying to teach the caveman to play Scrabble. It’s uphill work. The only word they know is ‘ugh’ and they don’t know how to spell it.
Ford – What’s the point in that?
Arthur – We’ve got to make them evolve. Can you imagine what a world would be like descended from those cretins over there?
NYPD officers are drug dealers, rapists, murderers, thugs, and hopelessly corrupt. So all that Twitter School will teach them is how not to be quite so overt about admitting all this in public. It won’t actually turn them into decent people — which isn’t surprising given that they’re deliberate chosen for their low intelligence and proclivity for violence.
Re: Re:
TL,DR; the biggest gang in NYC?
un-fucking-believable!!
The course is designed to prevent embarrassments like a tweet sent by Capt. Thomas Harnisch of Harlem last month
Right there. That’s the problem. Treat the symptom – “we need to prevent embarrassment” rather than “we need to train our officers to be more aware of others”. It’s not the fault of the officers anymore – it is the morons at the top that are hiring them and training them that we need to replace.
Re: Re:
shame they cannot just have their officers know the laws they are enforcing, and have repurcussions when said officers break the law. That might solve a lot of the hostility police are facing daily
Pandemic – Etymology – “affecting all the people”
So you’re saying the entire police force acts badly and New York needs to sack the entire police force?
Re: Re:
pan·dem·ic
adjective
1. (of a disease) prevalent over a whole country or the world.
But the word works even if using your definition of “affecting all the people”. Because regardless of whether every officer acts inappropriately, this does affect the entire police force. The officer who made the joke (publicly, and addressed at a community organization) about the woman who died after falling onto the subway tracks was no lowly rookie but a captain, a precinct commander. When the leadership acts this way, the rank-and-file are inclined to follow.
You know, insensitivity is not racism, dishonesty, or even evil
Why shouldn’t they be free to say insensitive things. I have to agree with the captain, some fool is bound to blame someone other than the “victim” for being so stupid that she wouldn’t look up from her iPad. We need to be responsible for our own stupid acts and not try to shift the blame to others and restrict the freedoms of others in order to protect the few fools who are too stupid to protect themselves.
Re: You know, insensitivity is not racism, dishonesty, or even evil
Yeah! Damn right!
Lets bring back natural selection!!
Lets re-establish the laws of survival of the fittest.
Ban stop lights. Let cars take their chances at who goes next through an intersection.
Remove all hand railings and barriers that might prevent the “few fools” from falling to their deaths or breaking their bones.
Oh for those greater days when no safety rules were a way of life and the lesser beings could off themselves easily and swiftly at an early age, making more room for those of us who deserved to live.
Sigh!
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Who cares about serving the public any more?
“…the public might better be served by excising said jackasses from the police ranks entirely.”
but… who would then fill these vacant positions?
After all, the job description says :
===================================================
Jackasses and border-line morons, with no respect
for humanity, no common sense or understanding of
the law and no idea what constitutes appropriate
behaviour, wanted.
Retired MAFIA hit-men and ex-military personnel
preferred.
====================================================
If you hire assholes, you can hardly expect them to suddenly become angels by putting on a uniform.
American police forces are now made up of people who LIKE THE IDEA of wearing 5 grand worth of Military Assault Gear to serve a warrant – who want to use an armored tank to roust vagrants.
To pretend that this is not the kind of person that the system wanted in these positions is silly. These assholes were hired for the job because they fit the exact profile of the kind of people the boys at the top of the food chain wanted in these positions – Minions, willing to do what it takes to get paid, as long as they can screw over what they see along the way with impunity.
Excising these jackasses is simply not an option as far as the 1% are concerned and therefor, cannot and will not happen.
“Get used to it”, is pretty much your only recourse until Americans regrow their lost spine.
PS
Quick note:
For all those LEOs out there who got upset at my calling you a border-line moron, please realize that I was actually referring to you as being one of the jackasses instead.
>The kind of person that doesn’t know they shouldn’t make fun of dead members of the public they’re supposed to be protecting and serving probably aren’t the kind of people I really want walking around with a gun in the first place.
For better or worse, you basically just said you don’t want a military. I can’t speak for the police, but within the military, if you gave everyone the boot for such a degree of insensitivity, you’d have nothing but the 10 guys in the battalion you wouldn’t trust to not accidentally shoot themselves with their own guns left. Asking people to not abuse their power is one thing, asking them to not make dead people jokes though? Insanity.
Re: Re:
Slight difference however.
Cops patrol the Home Turf, dealing with your brother and sister, aunt and uncle, mother and father, and friends.
The military patrols foreign lands that your corporate rulers want to exploit at low cost, and the military deals with the people in those foreign lands in the fashion that all conquering armies in occupied lands have always treated conquered non-soldiers and its pretty likely that your brother, sister, aunt, uncle, mother, father and friends could not give a shit about any of those folks and will not be affected by the cruel and inhuman treatment of those folks at the hands of your occupying military forces.
Mind you, all of that is about to change as the Cops patrolling the Home Turf become more and more like the military on foreign ground, and the people that the Neo LEOs deal with are perceived more and more by the Neo-LEOs as conquered foreign peasants in an occupied foreign land, ripe for legalized abuse, torture and murder.
Currently though, the difference is still apparent.
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