How am I just now learning about the cops whose job is to play Fortnite?
Did you know that Denmark has a specialised unit of cops whose job is to play online games like Counterstrike: Global Offensive, Fortnite, and Minecraft? Me neither, until I was alerted to the existence (via Reddit(opens in new tab)) of the Danish Politiets Online Patrulje(opens in new tab) (Police Online Patrol), a squad of Danish police officers whose job is apparently to «patrol» online social spaces and keep an eye out for things like fraud and hate speech.
The unit maintains a presence on Steam(opens in new tab), Discord(opens in new tab), and even streams on Twitch(opens in new tab), where it was active earlier today. Naturally, it's also active in popular multiplayer games like the ones I mentioned earlier (the squad's player avatars(opens in new tab) in Minecraft have been customised to resemble a Danish police uniform). They're pretty prolific on TikTok, too.
The POP unit actually got started back in April 2022 with a remit to (the following is machine-translated from Danish) «patrol social media,» and «engage in dialogue with children and young people in particular, prevent inappropriate behaviour and crime, and intervene if offences are committed».
Denmark isn't alone in this practice. Community police in the Netherlands had a "Gaming with the police(opens in new tab)" initiative back in 2020, with 21 teams across the country trying to «keep in touch with youth who are active in the digital domain» by «entering their ‘comfort zone’ through gaming». The Dutch police didn't really say how successful that scheme was—which might tell you everything you need to know—but did say «gaming with the youth is well received [...] because it is a means that matches their interests,» and «is a contemporary way of
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