Police officers in Manchester have been told to stop Tweeting and get on with the job by a senior chief constable.
Stephen Watson the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police has said he spent some time looking over the social media of police officers and thought the police ought to get on with being the police because that’s what you are paid for.
He said: ‘The public genuinely don’t care what I have for breakfast, or what my opinions are on contemporary social issues.’
The Chief Constable is starting to reshape the police force in Manchester which happens to be one of the biggest in the UK.
Admittedly the number of suspects being charged in Manchester has risen over the last 12 months under his watch and the time it is taking to answer 999 calls has dropped.
Believing his success is thanks to a return of a traditional policing and back-to-basics approach.
He believes that social media, in these very contest times, has a particular skill and it’s a skill that the police officers do not have, so for the most part, regardless of our intentions, we tend to use social media badly.
And actually, reaching out to communities is all too often perceived as virtue signaling. And, candidly, in some cases it is virtue signaling.
The police chief’s views are that officers should be professional, impartial, and never political.