Police have launched an investigation after a pornographic photograph was shared via one of its official social media accounts.
The very graphic image, along with a link to an adult video site, was posted on X, previously known as Twitter, on the NYP Traffic Bureau & Road Safety Team channel.
It happened shortly after 6pm on Thursday 26 September.
The Tweet was quickly deleted.
The message on the post said: “Watch charming girls get ****** on Eporner_com”. In the original message the expletive was spelled out in full.
It is not known if the account had been hacked. The @NYTrafficBureau account is still active and has tweeted again once since the explicit post.
A spokesperson for North Yorkshire Police said: “We’re looking into how this happened, and that work is ongoing.
“In the meantime, we have taken immediate measures to secure the account in question.”
North Yorkshire Police rationalised its social media output in 2021.
The force defended its decision to axe popular Twitter channels run by individual officers, saying crime reports could be missed “if they are not be able to monitor their North Yorkshire Police social media accounts on a daily basis”.
A Freedom of Information request to the force last year revealed that four officers in the force had “broken force policy in relation to their social media use from 1 October 2021 to 30 September 2022”.