Police officer sews Twitter handle onto uniform, forced to remove it

Sergeant Fred Stork is a beat cop in Eindhoven and is also on Twitter. He thought it would be fun to sew his Twitter handle, @brigadierSTRYPi onto his uniform, but after a reporter tweeted about needle work, his superiors told him to remove it.

A spokesperson told Algemeen Dagblad: “There are national regulations for a police uniform that an officer may not deviate from.” The spokesperson liked the initiative though and added, “who knows, one day this may be possible. But ‘The Hague’ must first give permission.”

The word ‘brigadier’ in the handle @brigadierSTRYPi means ‘sergeant’ and ‘STRYPi’ is likely a reference to the Strijp neighbourhood which is part of Fred Stork’s beat.

Interestingly, sergeant is the lowest police rank in the Netherlands where the insignia does not consist of stripes, but of a sword over a crown surrounded by laurel.

See also: Neighbourhood cops that twitter.

(Photo: politie.nl)

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 6th, 2013 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Fashion, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Tags: Eindhoven, emblems, insignia, police, police ranks, sergeants, Strijp, Twitter, uniforms