Leicestershire officers dress up as Santa and elf after Twitter pledge

Two Leicestershire police officers swapped their uniforms for Santa outfits to fulfill a pledge they made on Twitter.

Pc Joe Lloyd and police community support officer Jay Cooper promised to dress as Santa and an elf if they could reach 700 followers on their @OakhamPolice account.

After their pledge was retweeted by Chief Constable Simon Cole the target was reached and the account now has 782 followers.

True to their word the officers bought their costumes and set off to The Parks Special School in Oakham, which teaches children with disabilities, to give out presents to the children.

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PC Lloyd said; “I really enjoy using Twitter on my beat as a way of communicating with people who live and work on my neighbourhood and was trying to think of ways to increase our followers. It seemed like a fun and light hearted way of doing it and I was really surprised when Mr Cole retweeted my comment! I think Jay was a little surprised to read on Twitter that he had to dress up as an elf but I knew he would rise to the challenge.

“We’ve had a great response from people who saw us in our costumes and had some lovely comments from our followers on Twitter. People have using the hashtag #SantaJoe and #ElfJay and sending us nice tweets. We really enjoyed going to the Parks School and were able to spend some time with a group of fantastic children. We also had a tweet from the Chief saying, ‘great effort! I am suitably impressed,’ which was really nice to receive.”

Mrs Joan Gibson, head teacher of The Parks Special School, said; “It was great that SantaJoe and ElfJay came to visit the children at The Parks as life is a bit more of a challenge for them and it is lovely to do something that brings them pleasure.”