A MISUNDERSTANDNG turned to triumph for SouthTrafford Police when one of its Facebook posts attracted more than 17,000 likes.

A member of the public uploaded a photo to the force's Facebook page which showed officers loading fence panels into the back of a van and complained that police were shopping while on duty.

But in fact, PSCO Jane Barrett and her colleague were actually helping administer restorative justice, as a young boy had kicked down an elderly victim's fence.

In her post, PCSO Barrett said: "Instead of criminalising him we used a process called restorative justice, whereby he apologised to the victim and his parents offered to pay for two new fence panels.

"Unfortunately the boy's parents didn't have facility to pick up the fence panels and neither did the victim.

"We therefore offered to go and pick up the fence panels for her and dropped them at her house.

"We were actually doing a good deed for someone. Something we do every day.

The post went viral on the internet, even attracting supportive comment s from as far afield as Texas.

South Trafford neighbourhood inspector, Laura Burgess, said: "I think that this demonstrates the tremendous use of social media.

"We have negated members of the public seeing us in a bad light, by explaining the full story and in fact this has shown us in a very helpful and positive like.

"The number of likes shows just how many people are interested in the work we do."