toronto bike cop

Toronto bike cops can't stop bragging about ticketing cars

Toronto Police are on a blitz this week following Mayor John Tory's announcement of a new, six-point plan to ease traffic congestion within the city.

The week-long traffic blitz – or "heightened rush hour route enforcement campaign," as the city put it – kicked off Monday and will continue through to Friday during times of peak traffic in the downtown core.

Being that pretty much every cop is now also a social media whiz, the initiative has hashtags so that citizens can follow along as naughty drivers get busted for breaking the rules.

#GetTOMoving and #RushHourTO are giving Torontonians some serious schadenfreude, but it seems to be the parking enforcement officers themselves having the most fun with this blitz on Twitter.

Toronto's fleet of tweet-happy bike cops have been ticketing and towing anyone they can find illegally blocking traffic downtown, and they want citizens of the internet to know about it.

This makes sense. The blitz is as much about awareness as it is enforcement. It also makes sense that these officers are proud of their accomplishments. They do their jobs well, and they're making a difference.

What makes less sense is how openly gleeful, and playful the cops, are being about busting bad parkers.

It can be argued that the people blocking traffic deserve to be put on blast for breaking the law. I wouldn't disagree with that – but it could also be argued that something feels kind of weird about seeing cops take selfies with the cars they're having towed.

And tweeting 'Rush Hour' GIFs...

And Photoshopping themselves into memes...

And using emojis like my mom did when she first discovered emojis...

By and large, responses to the police officers have been overwhelmingly positive. Members of the #BikeTO community have even been contributing to the hashtag with emoji-laden snaps of their own.

But some tweets are just a little bit too accusatory for Twitter's tastes.

"Mom on way to daycare came running up to her car on back of tow truck in No Stopping #RushHourTO-Release on scene $80.23 & $150 ticket," reads a tweet from the @TorontoPolice account sent Monday.

"Proud of what you do but probably not a good idea to boast about ticketing a mom on way to pick up her kids," replied a citizen. "Life's already hard enough #empathy"

Lead photo by

Rob McLarty


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