New Zealand police forced to apologise over road death tweet

New Zealand police have apologised after sending a tweet that appeared to make light of informing relatives that a member of their family had died in a car crash.

The official Twitter account for the New Zealand police force posted a gif image of comedian Steve Carell from the US version of The Office with a slight grin on his face. The text on the picture read: “This is the worst!”

“When we have to tell someone their family member has died in a crash”, the police wrote above the gif.

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The message was published “a day after a car crash in Southland that killed three people, and the same day as a police chase in south Auckland ended with one dead,” says New Zealand news website Stuff.

Twitter users expressed disbelief and outrage almost immediately following the tweet’s publication.

“This is not OK @nzpolice,” Laura Banks wrote. “A tweet like this just lets your hardworking officers down.”

One commenter, Nik Dirga, said: “OK, it’s only Monday, but this tweet by NZ Police already takes the booby prize for social media fail of the week. Tone-deaf.”

Another poster Scott Warren wrote: “Staggering that anyone even considered tweeting that, let alone searched for the meme, drafted the tweet and then shared with the world!”.

The tweet was quickly deleted but not before it was shared widely around the world. New Zealand police subsequently issued an apology.

Karen Jones, the force’s Deputy Chief Executive Public Affairs told news.com.au the “road safety tweet” imagery was “wrong”.

“We feel terrible about this mistake, as we put victims at the heart of what police do,” she said.

“Social media is a hugely important channel to NZ Police and we appreciated the prompt feedback we got from members of our community who pointed out the inappropriateness of the tweet.

“We are extremely sorry and will learn from this.”