Greater Manchester’s Chief Constable has said officers stop “virtue-signalling” on social media and get on with the job they are paid to do
In an interview with the Times this morning Stephen Watson, said he wanted officers to avoid online “fluff and nonsense” and get on with catching criminals and answering 999 calls.
He told The Times that police officers should be professional, impartial and never political.
“They should not be involved in “public discourse on Twitter, where people are knocking lumps out of each other”, he said, adding: “People can do that in a democracy, that’s just not for the police.”
Watson, said:
“Using social media, in these very contested times, requires a particular skill. And it’s a skill that we 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 signalling. And, candidly, in some cases it is virtue signalling.”
