Bengaluru and Mumbai Police are using innovative methods to drive home the message of road safety by using memes and references of popular English TV series like Friends, Game of Thrones and Narcos. AKANKSHA SONI tells you more
Gone are the days when the word ‘police’ made you think of overweight officers, sitting in dimly lit rooms with dusty files, using the same old investigative techniques.
The Bengaluru and Mumbai Police are giving the ‘boring cop’ image a run for its money. These police officers are throwing in witty and popular cultural references from TV series Friends, Game of Thrones and Narcos, as also using memes and jokes, to spread awareness about road safety, drunk driving and online fraud.
last month, the Bengaluru Police used a snake in the grass picture in its campaign against online fraud to warn citizens about how online fraudsters are there in your midst but impossible to spot. The Mumbai Police used the famous ‘Joey doesn’t share food’ reference from Friends to warn netizens against sharing their passwords with anyone.
Taking a leaf from this English sitcom, people are now sharing humorous tweets and memes on the same subject, making the police look modern and innovative in their effort to fight crime.
Ravi Dalvi, business head of Trivone, the company that Mumbai Police collaborated with for this campaign, says: “The point of using memes or gifs was to attract the millennial crowd, by connecting with the youth on their level, and using their language to make sure the message of road safety went across. By using funny taglines of shows or movies that are famous on the social network, your message definitely gets shared among the youth”.
Not just this, cops are also turning to Twitter to spread awareness. On Holi this year, Mumbai Police tweeted against party poopers through punny warnings. In its #HaveAHolyHoli campaign, the police posted witty posts to encourage people to celebrate a safe Holi. ‘Don’t compel us to make you feel the blues on a vibrant #Holiday’, one tweet said.
The latest reference is of Baahubali (the movie) to create awareness about traffic rules. “If you’ve seen the first Baahubali, the question on everyone’s mind was “Katappa ne Baahubali ko kyu maaraIJ” While millions will make it to cinemas to find out the answer, Mumbai Police added another undying question — “Why don’t people follow traffic rulesIJ” they tweeted with the hashtag #BahubaliOfTrafficDiscipline.
The Bengaluru Traffic Police was not far behind in being innovative and used many Game of Thrones references to drive home the message against drunk driving and road rage last month. The police compared jaywalkers to White Walkers from the epic fantasy-drama and took hilarious jibes at Jon Snow ‘who knows 99 per cent nothing, but one per cent road safety’ as he still wears a helmet.
This memes went viral on the social media and gave rise to many conspiracy theories, especially with the department tweeting a spoiler alert and the marked photo shopped by the Bangalore Police on Jon Snow’s helmet holding the Targaryens mark.
“Police and Humor! Hats off BTP. You nailed it with this post,” wrote one commentator, summing up the thoughts of many others.
More recently, in a bid to scare drug-dealers in the city, the police’s Twitter account shared photos of actor Wagner Moura, who plays the role of Pablo Escobar, in the hit Netflix series Narcos. They tweeted a small poem — Roses are red, violets are blue, heard you’re selling drugs, we’ll come visit you’ with a meme of a depressed looking Pablo Escobar from Narcos. It became so popular that Netflix India recorded how impressed it was.
This new found humour comes from a number of young Indians hired to handle the police’s social media account.
Praveen Sood, Commissioner of Police, Bengaluru, tells you that uniformed policemen are no longer handling the accounts. “We believe that police should so what they are good at — policing. Instead a young team of social media operators is doing the job. The response to the new tweets has been good. We have around 7 lakh people following our Twitter. We are now available on Instagram, Facebook and have even joined Snapchat. It has become so popular that our followers are increasing by 1,000-plus every day. These campaigns are launched to change people’s behaviour on a long-term sustainable basis. That can only happen if they remember a message at the back of their mind. Hence, the way we are sending the message will hopefully make them retain the idea of safety on roads, or not commit crime and say ‘no’ to drugs. By using old fashioned methods and mundane things doesn’t have an impact on the community. And now saying the same thing and sending the same message has been so much more successful. Our campaign has been highly successful and we will continue to use more such methods,” Sood says.
Not to be left behind, Delhi Police last week, took a different path in ensuring road safety — they organised a summer camp at the Traffic Park in the Capital to educate youngsters on the importance of safety rules. The camp started on May 15 and will continue till June 9, is being held in four batches. Each batch will be given a week long training period. The main agenda of this programme is to encourage and inform children about the traffic rules and in turn teach their families in a bid to reduce instances of underage driving.