Recently, the NYPD had a twitter campaign asking people to post photos of themselves with the NYPD. The moves was meant to show how cops and the community interacts. However, things backfired.
Thousands of people started to post photos all right... These photos were of cops beating up on civilians, misbehaving and a whole host of things. The trend "
MyNYPD" was trending second in the world and caught the attention of the media.
It is sad that the campaign turned into what it did, but the NYPD does have a bad reputation due to some cops who overstep their authority and forget that cops exists to keep peace, order and to serve the public. However, in NYC they have become almost like Nazi soldiers. They go about profiling minorities as automatic perpetrators and are quick to shoot people even if the situation does not warrant such a defense. Moreover, they do not care who they hit and last year beat down an elderly man for merely jay walking. (see:
http://nypost.com/2014/01/19/cops-beat-elderly-man-after-he-jaywalked/)
In light of this, it is no surprise that the people will rebel and show their frustration in a way that won't get them in trouble: twitter. Twitter is known for allowing all kinds of speech, minus religious one of course. They allow porn, violence, vulgarity and all kinds of evil things. Therefore, photos of cops beating people up will not go censored. Nevertheless, this situation must force the NYPD powers that be to think about how they run their organization. Policies must be scrutinized carefully and the NYPD must work harder to build better relations with the community they are supposed to serve, not lord over.
Source:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2014/04/mynypd-twitter-campaign-spawns-hashtags-across-the-country/
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/april-26-mynypd-nudity-jesus-article-1.1769338
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/04/23/why-mynypd-failed/
