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Social media has transitioned from leisure-based communication into a platform for professional work across many organisations. The police force is one such organisation that is integrating social media into its practice, especially as a means for community engagement. This effort creates new opportunities to engage with the public, whilst also generating challenges that conflict with the organisational culture of the police, and leads to complicated situations relating to police activities. This work aims to understand the influence of social media on police activities through the lens of activity theory. As part of a larger study of the UK police force, this work used a multi-method approach to gather qualitative data from a variety of roles and positions. Key findings highlighted two contradictions that had an influence upon the activity of community engagement, in terms of (1) rule-based organisation vs. amorphous social media, and (2) limited resources vs. maintenance and engagement in evolving platforms.