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Photo of ‘handsome’ police officer prompts swathes of comments on Facebook post

The post was meant to educate the public on missing person appeals but led to a different discussion entirely.
The post was meant to educate the public on missing person appeals but led to a different discussion entirely. The post was meant to educate the public on missing person appeals but led to a different discussion entirely.

A photo of a “handsome” police officer has sent social media users into a frenzy on Nottinghamshire Police’s Facebook page.

The post was intended to educate the public on the efforts of the force’s Missing From Home team in the Nottinghamshire area.

However, the photo of Sergeant Ian Birkin, who leads the team, appeared to distract social media users from the issue at hand.

PROFILE: Sgt Ian BirkinSgt Ian Birkin leads the force’s Missing From Home team and will be working on New Year’s…Posted by Nottinghamshire Police on Thursday, December 27, 2018

“Sgt Ian Birkin leads the force’s Missing From Home team and will be working on New Year’s Eve,” the post read.

“The public are fantastic at helping us locate vulnerable people and we’ve had a significant number of missing people found as a result of public information.

“Although we don’t see an increase in people going missing over the festive period, we do ask the public to remain vigilant, particularly as people tend to be drinking more, the weather is colder and the nights are darker.”

The post went on to ask people to continue to check missing person appeals over the festive period, but many of the comments were simply in response to the attached photo of Sgt Birkin.

“All the women will be going missing after seeing this so he can find them,” one comment read while another social media user wrote: “I’m suddenly feeling a bit lost…”

However, not everybody was amused by the comments, with one reply reading: “Come on ladies, this is a bloke doing his job not asking to be ogled.

“Have some respect… People would be up in arms if it was a young female officer with middle aged men making these comments, it has to work both ways.”

Sgt Birkin’s photo is not the first police picture to prompt such replies, however.

In 2016, a Facebook photo of Detective Superintendent Bobby Singleton posted by the Police Service of Northern Ireland saw similar comments made.

Posted by Police Service of Northern Ireland on Wednesday, August 24, 2016

“Didn’t make them like that in my day,” one comment read while another social media user wrote: “I need to break the law to get handcuffed to him!”