Monday, November 2, 2015

Cops Are Incredibly Bad at Making Jokes on Twitter

Just a copper, having a bloody laugh. Photo via Flickr user Lee Haywood

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

On Sunday afternoon, Everton's football team scored lots of goals against Sunderland's football team. Six of them; six goals. Generally speaking: a lot of goals. How best to celebrate that? Whip your half-and-half scarf above your head while shouting "AROUNA KONE?" Full Roberto Martinez back tattoo?

You would think so. But no. Instead, a local man—returning from the game with a heart full of song—tweeted Mersey police to, lol, say he'd witnessed a rape. The response he received was one of a knowing wink because, apparently, the literal police force think that sexual assault is banter.

By 6 PM, the inevitable public outcry had led to a full statement, the launch of an investigation and the presumed dismissal of whoever was responsible. Police doing banter on social media has ended in tears. I put it to every single one of you that this is the most 2015 thing that could ever have happened.

The Kanye West Glastonbury petition was pretty 2015, and the major papers not really reporting on the Prime Minister of the UK allegedly putting his penis inside a pig was also very 2015. But as 2015 goes, the police having their we're-just-like-you-honest schtick blow up in their faces—along with giving us a stark reminder of why only 15 percent of sexual assault survivors even bother going to them—is peak 2015.

The ensuing shit-storm—on the scale, comfortably, of a bad madras sprayed up the wall of a Megabus toilet—will guarantee that we'll be spared this sort of thing in 2016. But the inevitability of this actually happening is something to be pointed and yelled at for at least the rest of the week.

So to recap: The police, the same organization that were once duty-bound to give up their hats to any pregnant women who needed the toilet, made an active decision to basically become LadBible's military wing and didn't think there would be a problem with that. You cannot borrow a pencil without having to send seven emails in a public sector job, so let's just take a moment to relive some of the social media output that will have been green-lit by actual human adults:

LEICESTER POLICE FREE IPAD BURGLAR BANTER #LADS

Leicestershire Police has nearly 1,500 employees and receives around £169 million a year in funding, yet somehow has a worse grasp of hashtags than a primary school teacher's part-time Etsy account.

SOLIHULL POLICE HUGE AMOUNT OF CANNABIS COME-AND-COLLECT IT #LADS

Twenty thousand RTs for Solihull Police here, and about twice as many replies that just say "hahaha brilliant!!!" Somewhere, in a tiny back room, a few burly policemen are standing around a computer that's still probably running Windows fucking Vista, guffawing, slapping each other on the back, and shouting, "Good one, Keith!"

NORTHUMBRIA#LAD POLICE

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