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OXFORD, Miss. — There is more riding on this weekend’s Ole Miss vs. Florida game than just football stats.

The Oxford and Gainesville Police Departments have spent this week in a Twitter takedown, rooting their respective teams on to victory and poking fun at each other.

“That one got 204 retweets and 207 favorites,” said Oxford Police Lieutenant Hildon Sessums, who runs the department’s Twitter account.

Of all the department’s tweets, Sessums said he is probably proudest of one where he asked Gainesville, “We’ve been wanting to know… In summertime do y’all switch to jorts for uniform pants or is it a year round thing?”

But it is all in good fun.

Gainesville Police’s Public Information Officer Ben Tobias spoke with WREG over the phone Thursday, laughing as he recalled his favorite Oxford tweet.

“The one about asking us about jorts, honestly. I literally laughed out loud,” he said.

The police departments’ social media guys have been tweeting back and forth since Gainesville tweeted after the Florida vs. Tennessee game last weekend.

The tweet joked that if it got 1,000 retweets, Gainesville Police would stop the Tennessee buses. Sessums said he thought the tweet was funny.

So, he tweeted about Ole Miss’ next game and how it seemed Gainesville Police had some jokes.

It launched a barrage of funny pictures and jabs.

The exchanges aimed to get some laughs, but Oxford Police said it also aimed to grow its social media presence in the community. It also meant to show a lighter side of law enforcement.

Oxford has nabbed an extra 1,500 followers since last weekend.

“By picking up this many followers, it’s that many more people we have that we can get our message out to,” Sessums said.

“We’re a young department, and half, or over half, of our community in Oxford is college students,” said Major Jeff McCutchen.

They said Oxford Police plan to use their social media pull to better engage with residents.

Until then, the Twitter takedown is too fun to pass up.

Thursday, Oxford tweeted to Gainesville, joking about being “kind of a big deal” that a WREG crew showed up to interview them.

But Gainesville quickly put both WREG and Oxford back in our place, jokingly tweeting, “@OxfordPolice @3onyourside @CAlexander_WREG Just a local news crew? Cute. This is our PIO filming for @OTLonESPN.” It included a picture of a news crew recording Gainesville’s officer.

Oxford said the response to the Twitter feud has been overwhelmingly positive.

Still, both departments said they received a couple comments from residents, claiming the tweets were a waste of tax dollars. In response, Gainesville tweeted a picture of many of their officers huddled around a computer. Tobias said it was a joke. The only people tweeting from the police accounts are him and Sessums.

Both men will be at the game Saturday. They agreed the losing team’s police department will need to post a tweet cheering for the winning team.

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