A bizarre series of angry tweets between the Detroit Police Department and a reporter over the weekend spun out of control and eventually led to an apology from the officer to the journalist.
The Twitter battle began when Steve Neavling, who runs the Motor City Muckraker online news outlet, tweeted that Detroit firefighters were pelted with rocks and bottles while trying to extinguish a suspected arson fire. The police apparently did not show up to offer protection.
That led to a Detroit police tweet that accused Neavling of unfairly criticizing police raids that cater to TV news coverage and Neavling, in turn, pointing out the DPD’s reluctance to release public records.
From there, the tone got worse and the cop manning the department’s Twitter account became increasingly frustrated. The @detroitpolice tweets were later deleted but not before another online news site, Jalopnik Detroit, captured the entire thread in a screen save. After the Jalopnik report on Sunday, which included the full sequence of dueling comments, gained some attention, the officer responsible for the messages apologized to Neavling.
(It should be noted that Neavling and the Detroit cops have maintained a tense relationship for quite some time; and it’s also important to point out that the DPD apparently has a very sketchy track record in terms of using social media in a professional manner.)
On Tuesday, Neavling posted this on Facebook:
“I am happy to say that Detroit Police Sgt. Michael Woody has apologized to me for the torrent of tweets that he sent from the DPD’s official account over the weekend. He assured me that DPD would be responsive and timely to requests for public information. Thanks to Aaron Foley for capturing the Twitter exchange before the DPD erased the tweets – and then running a story on it. Score one for transparency!”
Here are a few of the tweets that created this controversy:
