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Met police helicopter service accused of "extremely irresponsible behaviour" on social media

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By Gillian West, Social media manager

July 12, 2014 | 3 min read

The Metropolitan police helicopter service - which tweets under the handle @MPSinthesky - has been accused of encouraging abuse of its critics on Twitter.

In replying to tweets complaining about noise late at night the helicopter service copied in its 91,000 followers by including a dot before the complainants Twitter handle.

After complaining about the noise at 1:30am Twitter user @anyabike received a speedy response from the @MPSinthesky account apologising for the disturbance, but in making the response public she was then subjected to a barrage of abuse from other @MPSinthesky followers.

Highlighting the experience via Storiify the user, who does not want to reveal her real name, reported that at least two other women have been subjected to the same 'pile on' after responses to their noise complaints were made public by the response from @MPSinthesky. Speaking with the Guardian she said: "I cannot think of any other corporate account that would effectively encourage its followers to go after someone who has complained to them. It's extremely irresponsible behaviour in my view." Twitter user @Sarah_Buckley who made a similar complaint on 6 July received the same abuse when her handle was made public by @MPSinthesky putting a dot before her Twitter handle in a response. A number of official police Twitter accounts also retweeted the helicopter service's reply.

@MPSinthesky's treatment of user @ausetana saw her close her account, which had been active for over two years, after the response to her noise complaint was retweeted 34 times resulting in a number of rude and abusive messages.

A response given to the Guardian from the Met said all officer/staff receive training covering "strategy, policy, procedure and best practice" before using social media and said the MPS "does not condone or encourage Twitter users to 'pile on' or 'gang up' on other users" but id couldn't not control "what users say on an open platform".

The Drum is awaiting comment from the Met police at the time of writing.

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