According to the guidelines of the police, police social media accounts whose holder is a candidate in the elections, will go quiet in the period preceding the elections.
Several electoral candidates work in the police. In their election work, they do not represent the police and may not use tools intended for performing their official duties for the purposes of campaigning, including their work phone, police email and social media accounts of the police.
The police's expert social media accounts, whose administrator stands for election, will go quiet until the elections. During this time, the candidates will not update their account nor refer to their campaign work in the account. The policy for police expert accounts is that they may only be used for official duties.
The police want to ensure that social media accounts used in police duties are not used for political advertising in any way, even indicatively. The matter has been communicated internally within the police.
Every police employee has freedom of speech. The guidelines serve to define the boundaries of work and campaign work in leisure time.
If a candidate has a private social media account or election account, they only represent themselves, not the police.
For a list of all of the police’s social media accounts, please see poliisi.fi/en/social-media.
