NSW Police Are Being Slammed On TikTok For ‘Copaganda’
"POV, you're writing an incident report after killing another Blak Australian"
I regret to inform you, the cops are on TikTok now.
NSW Police decided to join TikTok this month, presumably after their social media team suggested they could help make speeding tickets sexy for young people. The late adopters have already racked up over 42,000 followers, and have posted a bunch of cutesy vids designed to make you feel like cops are just everyday people!
Thankfully, Gen Z ain’t buying it.
Users are displaying their cognitive dissonance using TikTok’s duet feature, making mash-ups of NSW Police’s videos with recent examples of reporting on unlawful police strip-searches.
This playful POV video of the NSW Police officers searching for a truant driver’s record was savagely roasted by another user’s bricolage, comparing it to the deaths in custody in the state.
The Greens have even gotten involved now, taking on NSW Police’s most popular video with 3.5 million views.
Even the Police’s Royal Easter Show display didn’t escape scrutiny.
One of the more prolific trollers of the Premier State’s police force @easymoneyvancey looks like he touched a nerve, getting officially blocked by the cop’s TikTok account.
As reported by The Rolling Stone, cops taking to TikTok is not a new phenomenon. In the United States, in particular, hundreds of individual police officers have taken to Twitter in an attempt to “humanise the badge”, rather than the individual state accounts we see in Australia.
Back home, the fuzz has tried plenty of other avenues of engaging with the kids before TikTok. From tone-deaf attempts to link Beyoncé’s ‘Single Ladies’ with safety advice for women, to making dad jokes about Nickelback — like any other brand the police have learnt how to co-opt social media trends with success.
But, no matter how many videos NSW Police make of cats or mounted officers bonding with their horses, it won’t be enough to negate the hostility Gen Z feel about the police force’s systematic role and pervasive role in Indigenous deaths in custody.