An escalating row over a series of teenage tweets posted by the UK’s first ever youth police and crime commissioner (PCC) has seen her leave her £15,000 a year role.
Paris Brown, 17, had already apologised about the potentially offensive and inflammatory comments.Before quitting, Brown, from Sheerness in Kent said:
“If I’m guilty of anything it’s showing off and wildly exaggerating on Twitter and I am very ashamed of myself, but I can’t imagine that I’m the only teenager to have done this.”
The posts were written by Brown when she was aged between 14 and 16, long before she considered applying for the role as the Kent youth PCC. However, this did not prevent a number of critics calling for her to leave her post.
The Kent Police and local Crime Commissioner Ann Barnes, Brown’s immediate superior had defended the teenager. Whilst agreeing that the tweets were disgraceful and could not be condoned, she was eager to point out the young age at which Brown had tweeted.
Following confirmation that Brown had resigned, Barnes said:
“[it is] a very sad day.”
As the row had been breaking, Barnes had explained that no Twitter account of any of the 164 applicants for the role were looked at during the recruitment process.
Saying that this is likely to happen in the future, it could point to many people applying for jobs needing reputation management as social networking becomes the norm.
It is certainly something UK companies are giving more focus too, understanding that positive search results are increasingly key to growth.
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