A police power has defended utilizing a meme on social media to inform followers a legal its officers caught has been despatched to jail – regardless of on-line backlash.
Lancashire Police posted two pictures of one among 14 males who had not too long ago been convicted, Samuel Walmsley, utilizing the “how it started v how it’s going” meme format.
The first picture on X, previously often known as Twitter, exhibits Walmsley flashing a stack of money, adopted by his mugshot.
Creating a thread of posts, the power added extra details about the arrest and conviction, saying Walmsley was “one of 14 men jailed for nearly 50 years for his role in crime conspiracies in Great Harwood”.
Members of the group had been caught after posting their exploits on-line.
Walmsley was jailed for 2 years and 4 months after being charged with conspiracy to commit housebreaking and conspiracy to steal a motorcar.
The different 13 got jail sentences of between 9 months and 5 years 10 months for a variety of offences.
Lancashire Police’s submit has been considered greater than 16 million instances because it was posted on Tuesday night, and has additionally acquired hundreds of likes, reposts and replies.
The power additionally requested individuals who replied to fill in a survey about its social media use.
However, not everybody noticed the humorous aspect of the preliminary submit, given the context.
One social media person wrote: “Might be an unpopular opinion, but I feel like the police fundamentally shouldn’t be posting memes like this regardless of what they’ve done.”
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Another stated: “This sort of mocking, joking tweets is disgraceful. It condescends to and insults the victims of crime, is unseemly celebratory, and acts like policing is all one big jolly jape.”
Meanwhile, one other requested: “What kind of society do we live in when official police accounts are posting memes and trying to go viral?”
In response to the criticism, Lancashire Police stated in a press release: “The reaction to this post has been overwhelmingly positive both online – with more than 71k likes – and in the local community who were directly affected by this criminal activity.
“We will proceed to have interaction with individuals on this option to allow them to know in regards to the work we’re doing to sort out severe and organised crime and to maintain our communities protected.”
Source: information.sky.com”