After hearing that Ashley Cole and Ashley Young were racially abused on Twitter after England were knocked out of Euro 2012, you could be forgiven for re-evaluating the worth of the popular social networking platform. Thankfully, our 140-character faith was restored when we heard this story.
On the night of the England v Italy quarter-final, the Staffordshire Police Twitter account provided a significantly more entertaining match commentary than Mark Lawrenson and co – all achieved with a tongue-in-cheek nod to their primary crime-fighting duties.
Traditionally the West Midlands-based force uses Twitter to communicate serious messages to residents and highlight their achievements in the area.
That noble but straight-laced persona was done away with last Sunday, with comments about diving Italian footballers, heroic blocks from John Terry, and Roy Hodgson’s tactics taking centre-stage. A flurry of retweets in their hundreds soon came the way of @StaffsPolice.
The bobbies on the keyboard beat were clearly having a great time watching the tense quarter-final and most delightfully of all, linked their match observations back to their commitments to crime prevention.
It is often said that Britain’s police officers spend far too much time behind the desk, but that controversial distribution of resources now seems far more acceptable in our books. Less tazer, more Twitter. The campaign begins.
