Social Media Community Guidelines

At Cambridgeshire Constabulary we have a social media presence across Facebook, YouTube, X, Instagram and LinkedIn. We also offer a range of locally based accounts aimed at keeping the public informed about local issues and police activity.

We use our social media channels to communicate important messages with our communities and to share appeals, court results, good news stories and crime prevention advice.

Our aim is to provide a safe environment for our communities to feel welcome to engage with us, leave comments, raise questions and interact with our content.

It is important to us that our channels are kept as an open, two-way, communication method and to enable contact through social media.

Posts and comments on our accounts

It is our responsibility to ensure our channels remain a welcoming space for all. We do have the ability to remove content or block users from our accounts, but we want to restrict this to as little as possible.

Therefore, we ask those who leave comments or engages with any content posted by us, or other members of the public, to do so in a respectful and appropriate manner, showing courtesy and kindness to others.

Remember, all comments made on our social media posts are public.

Any views expressed via comments on our posts by members of the public do not reflect the views of Cambridgeshire Constabulary.

Guidelines

Comments may be hidden or deleted if they:

• Threaten national security or public safety
• Encourage disorder or criminal behaviour
• Contain spam, be defamatory, deceive others, be obscene, offensive, threatening, abusive or hateful towards any member of the public or our workforce, be inflammatory or promote sexually explicit material or violence.
• Promote discrimination based on protected characteristics including age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex or sexual orientation.
• Breach any of the terms of any of the social media platforms
• Contain any advertising or marketing for private businesses

Breach of guidelines

• We reserve the right to determine, at our discretion, whether contributions to our social media channels breach our guidelines

• We reserve the right to hide or delete comments made on our channels, as well as block users who do not follow these guidelines or report users to the social media provider
• We reserve the right to make a copy of any comments we deem appropriate for investigation as we feel necessary or is required for criminal justice purposes

Reporting a crime

Operators on our control room’s Digital Desk monitor our corporate social media channel’s inboxes 24/7.

You can report non-emergencies via the following accounts:@CambsCops on X, Facebook or Instagram at any time.

You can also report non-emergencies on our website or dial 101.

If a crime is in progress or there is a threat to life always dial 999.

Alternatively, you can report completely anonymously to Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.