Let's be honest, we all know Facebook is an online popularity contest. The more friends, the bigger the fan base.

However, police officers should think twice before accepting a friend request because criminals are scouring social networking websites on the lookout for corruptible cops.

Mike Cunningham, the Association of Chief Police Officers lead on counter- corruption and Deputy Chief Constable of Lancashire Constabulary, warns that forces need more guidance on officers using sites such as Facebook and Bebo, to protect them from villains.

“If I put out [on the internet] the fact that I am Mike Cunningham, I am a police officer and these are my hobbies, then we know there are people out there that are actively seeking to corrupt. We do not know the scale of it but we do know there is the potential for it [to become a problem for the service],” Cunningham tells Police Review (June 13).

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It's not just the internet that opens up the service to corruption. The ever-growing police family and wider use of volunteers gives more people access to information. “I am not saying community support officers are a source of corruption,” Cunningham says. “I am saying that as we open the doors to different staffing make-ups, we also need to be alert to people who are coming into the organisation, how they are vetted, how they are recruited and what access to information they have.”

As intelligence of organised crime groups advances, he proposes that intelligence of internal threats keeps pace because “corruption will thwart our ability to counter external threats”.

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