The Boston Globe speaks with Sgt. Tim Cotton, a Bangor, Maine, police officer who has become a minor Facebook phenomenon. When he took over Bangor Police Department Facebook page in 2014, it had less than 10,000 followers. Since then, the page has racked up nearly 173,000 “likes,” five times the population of Bangor. Cotton’s posts, which range from retellings of some emergency calls the department receives to photos of the famed “Duck of Justice” mascot, are comedic musings often written in a stream-of-consciousness, tongue-in-cheek manner.
In one viral post, he laid out the policies surrounding the “intra-home sharing of flannel shirts. Specifically, when a person takes a plaid, flannel shirt from another person in the same home” and whether it can be considered theft. “I’m not a social media guy,” Cotton said. “I’m 53 years old. But I like to tell our story.”