The dangers of social media were laid bare on Wednesday when the ACT Policing official Twitter account retweeted a pornographic image and followed the account.
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The tweet, from an account with the name Katie Sanders, show selfies of a woman and contained full-frontal nudity along with the hashtag #ThonglessThursday. It was originally tweeted 18 days ago.
ACT Policing deleted the tweet within a matter of minutes, and stopped following the account about 20 minutes later.
It was also revealed that the police account had a longer history with Ms Sanders, "favouriting" her pornographic tweets as far back as December 3.
These were also later "unfavourited" by police on Wednesday and Ms Sanders has since made her profile private.
Some social media users said they were offended by the wayward tweet. Ann des Landes asked for an explanation "why it is a problem to have a police account broadcasting virtual ogling of women's bodies?"
Territory police are fervent social media users, often reporting incidents first via their Facebook and Twitter pages.
And their communications efforts have not gone unnoticed.
In October ACT Policing won a national award for "Marketing on a Shoestring" from the Australian Marketing Institute.
Opinions were divided, however, on their festive social media rampage in December. "Slow down they told me, parum pa pum pum. Otherwise we'll fine you, parum pa pum pum," one tweet read.
Some Twitter users responded to the territory police's rhymes by suggesting officers in charge may have overindulged in the party punch.
But it seems there are limits and "don't retweet porn" might need to be added to their NYE checklist:
ACT Policing responded via Twitter, saying they were "not sure how" it happened. "It's deleted and our account is secure," the tweet read.
ACT Policing did not respond to Fairfax Media's questions on the matter.
