Levenmouth Police up for Twitter award

On December 23, Community Sergeant Craig Fyall, the man behind the often hilarious tweets, will travel to Northampton to find out if the account has won the title of the ‘Best Tweeting Corporate Police Account’ in the UK.

The account has attracted almost 10,000 followers on the social media site thanks to his wit and use of Scots dialect.

It was an idea that was driven by Craig.

“The account was active when I arrived last year but I decided we should try and make it a wee bit more quirky,” Craig said.

“We were already putting up important messages and keeping people updated but I just thought if it was a more interesting read and a wee bit funny, the audience would increase.

“But then it ended up going viral in July with a Pokemon tweet and it just took off from there.”

The tweet in question – “Lookin for those Pokemon hings? Dinny be doin that at 3 in the morning in someones gaiden or you’ll get huckled fae us! #witsthatawaboot” – was a reference to the popular Pokemon Go! mobile game. It garnered almost two thousand retweets and made the account a social media hit.

Craig, who comes from the East Neuk, admits that the Pokemon tweet is among his favourites.

“That was certainly the most memorable tweet – it was the one that got the most activity,” he said. “That kickstarted our popularity and it got us recognised across Scotland.

“There was another we did that got retweeted by Kevin Bridges – a cool person to get retweeted by. You can put ones on that you think will be a hit and it doesn’t quite hit the heights. The Pokemon one, though, was seen over 40,000 times.”

While the tweets are often funny, the account has a serious purpose and has proved beneficial several times.

“We had a missing person request last week and thanks to Twitter we got some positive lines of inquiry,” Craig said.

“We’ve gotten some feedback for unusual crimes as well – we had a vandalism and a theft of lobsters that Twitter gave us leads for.”

Now Craig’s success on Twitter has earned the account the attention of the Police Twitter Awards.

It will be up against accounts representing police in Shrewsbury and Lochaber and Skye for the most important award of the evening.

It is something that came as a pleasant surprise to Craig.

He said: “It’s good to be recognised for doing something positive and especially as it was our Twitter followers who voted for us to make the shortlist.”