Metropolitan Police’s odd ‘Christmas crime’ advent calendar immediately backfires

We all know brands love using Christmas to shape their content on social media, but it feels a bit off when serious institutions get involved.

So you can imagine what happened when the Metropolitan Police bizarrely decided to take a festive approach to hunting suspected criminals, by posting an odd video advent calendar in which a new suspect is revealed daily for the public to watch out for, up until December 25 itself.

The lovely video starts with a red background and words with the jolly “12 days of Christmas crime” appearing on the screen, as cartoon snow falls gently.

It then moves to an image of an advent calendar of 12 alleged wrong’uns silhouetted behind doors and it’s time to open door number one!

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Who is behind door number one? Well it is only “Andrew Claffey wanted for assault and carrying a knife”!

Yeah, we would have preferred a square of chocolate too.

This all seems pretty odd but the Met don’t appear to agree. In a press statement, superintendent Thomas Naughton said:  “With Christmas around 12 days away, we are increasing our efforts to arrest these individuals and apprehend them for their crimes.

“These offenders have caused harm and distress to their victims and it is our priority to arrest them to prevent them from causing further offences.”

Fair enough. But reacting to it, people thought the calendar was in pretty bad taste and just utterly bizarre.

Of course, loads of people joked that they would find some culprits in Westminster and noted the force’s decision not to investigate alleged Christmas parties in Downing Street last year due to “a lack of evidence” and a policy meaning they don’t investigate retrospective crimes.

Oh dear. Given normal advent calendars usually have a bigger chocolate on the 25th to really give people a treat, we just wonder what heinous suspected criminal Scotland Yard will reveal on Christmas Day?

We’ve contacted them to comment.