#MyNYPD Twitter Campaign Spawns Hashtags Across the Country - East Idaho News
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#MyNYPD Twitter Campaign Spawns Hashtags Across the Country

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042414 TwitterNYPD?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1398358227725ABC News(NEW YORK) — What the New York Police Department initially intended to be a social media public relations campaign has turned into a Twitter commentary on police brutality that has spread across to other law enforcement units across the nation.

The #myNYPD hashtag became one of the top trending hashtags on Twitter Tuesday after seeking people’s photos of police officers working in their communities. Instead, citizens began attaching the hashtag to pictures and video depicting police violence.

Initially, there were some positive responses to the campaign, but things turned ugly. With little context to many of the pictures, it’s difficult to determine the location and circumstances in which these incidences took place. But that didn’t stop the flurry of outraged tweets that two days later are still appearing on the Internet.

The backlash spread to the Los Angeles police department where #myLAPD began to trend, while others took to Twitter to compare the two police departments. From there, the tweets expanded to include the Seattle, San Francisco and Denver police departments, among others.

In an email NYPD Deputy Chief Kim Royster sent to ABC News affiliate WABC in New York, the department recognized that Twitter “provides an open forum for an uncensored exchange and this is an open dialogue good for our city.”

 

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