@GuildfordBeat Tweets Continue Following Apology

Published on: 30 Oct, 2013
Updated on: 2 Nov, 2013

Last week’s immigration raid at a car-wash in the car park of Burpham Sainsbury’s was followed by controversy when a Guildford police officer Tweeted: “Officers 1 Immigrants 0”. The police quickly removed the Tweet and apologised.

The Guildford Dragon NEWS asked Surrey Police to explain the GuildfordBeat Tweeting process. Specifically, we wanted to know was it down to individual officers to judge when a Tweet should be published and its wording or are they checked and/or edited? And will the process now be reviewed?

This is the reply received:

“We encourage officers and staff to use social media to engage with the public and keep them updated on policing in their area.

“It is for local teams to run their Beat accounts on Twitter and Facebook.

“There is a policy on all external content for the force, which includes not releasing sensitive or confidential information, discriminate on any grounds, be libellous or prejudicial, breach copyright or undermine operational activities. Officers are aware of this and advised to ensure that what they post is appropriate.

“In this case [the Tweet following the immigration raid], the language used was inappropriate, it was quickly removed and an apology issued. Words of advice were given to the individual.

“As a whole Surrey Police produces a large volume of content on social media each day and incidents of this nature remain rare.”

What is your opinion of the police tweet debate? Was the Tweet racist as some claimed, simply inappropriate or was it acceptable? Were “words of advice” a sufficient sanction for the officer concerned? Please use the ‘Leave as reply’ feature below to have your say.

Responses to @GuildfordBeat Tweets Continue Following Apology

Sean Jenkinson Reply

November 3, 2013 at 10:52 am

I’m not a racist but I really don’t think that there was a problem with the officer’s tweet. What I do have a problem with is all this political correctness. It seems we can’t say anything with out being called racist but it seem OK for us to have to put up with all the illegal immigrants coming to the UK.

The problem with this country now is that we have so many immigrants coming to the UK, both illegally and legally, that people are just getting tired of it. That is why they post Tweets like this, out of frustration.

You only had to watch the program Pickpockets and Proud, [Channel 5] the other night on television to see what what the Romanians get up to and what the police are up against. Then you can understand why they and the general public get so angry about all the immigration to our country. It is set to get worse in 2014 when we lift restrictions on how many Romanians can come into the country.

I think the day will come when that kind of Tweet will be the least of our problems. When it come to immigration things can only get worse, I’m afraid.