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At least two police officers were sacked, seven resigned and 150 faced disciplinary action after posting inappropriate photos or comments on Facebook in the past four years.
Officers used the social networking site – which has 30 million users in the UK – to harass former partners and ex-colleagues, to comment on others' wives and to suggest they had beaten up members of the public during protests. Some even revealed details of police operations, tried to befriend victims of crime or were seen in inappropriate photographs, the forces said.
The details, released following a request under the Freedom of Information Act, come as a review into police corruption found there was a “significant blurring” between officers' personal and professional lives on social networking sites, which risked damaging the service's reputation.
The figures, from 41 of the 43 forces in England and Wales, cover the period between 2008 and 2010.