Groups and individuals angry with the New York City Police Department posted pictures of police brutality in response to an NYPD invitation to share photos of police interacting with ordinary New Yorkers, the
New York Daily News reported.
"Do you have a photo w/ a member of the NYPD? Tweet us & tag it #myNYPD," went the police invitation.
Members of Occupy Wall Street quickly overwhelmed the site with photos showing confrontations between police and protesters, the
New York Post reported.
Some 70,000 people from around the world posted comments against the police, turning an NYPD community outreach effort in social media into a public relations fiasco. The #myNYPD became Twitter's top trending hashtag late Tuesday.
Supporters of Occupy Wall Street were among the most active while someone else posted a
photo of an elderly man arrested for jaywalking in Manhattan with blood streaming from the side of his face, according to the Post.
An NYPD spokesman said cops accepted that Twitter was an open, uncensored forum.
"We are doing it to get our messages out to the communities. We will not be deterred from our social media objective," NYPD spokesman Stephen Davis said, according to the Post.
"What the NYPD did is fail to see that if there are things that can be dredged up in your environment, the louder voices of discontent will tweet them," Anthony Rotolo, a media professor at Syracuse University, told the Daily News.
He said the NYPD should not pullback from using Twitter. "It would mean the crowd had shouted them down," Rotolo said.
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