The Social Media Beat

How many agencies have started to look at social media use for their organization and have been stumped by one simple challenge - comments from the public? There have been many cases of agencies starting social media accounts that reversed their entry and others that are stalling on their choice to enter because of the perceived and real problems in knowing how to deal with comments from the public. The other consideration that also plays into this spectrum is returning comments from the organization. This can also be a hindrance if you don't have some clear guidelines. So in essence there are two problems here. 1. Commenting from the public 2. Commenting to the public Let's look at the latter first. Any choice to enter social media in a robust and vibrant way should erase concerns of commenting to the public in response to questions and or comments. You see, if you enter social media to only broadcast your information you are going to miss the most important and effective part of the space... s ...

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With National Police Week approaching, it seems like an appropriate time to reflect on officer safety. This year, 362 names are being added to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. Dedicated in 1991, the Memorial honors more than 19,000 officers who have been killed in the line of duty. The IACP offers many officer safety resources through our National Center for the Prevention of Violence Against the Police, a partnership with the Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice. We also offer several other officer safety programs. As with any new technology, social media adds a new component to officer safety considerations. More and more frequently, chiefs and sheriffs tell us their stories about instances where social media has compromised police operations, criminal investigations, officer safety, and family notifications of officers killed or injured in the line of duty. The Center offers a Facebook Safety for Law Enforcement fact sheet, a Facebook Privacy Settings Checklist, a ...

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Today's guest blog post comes from Sarah Boyd, public relations specialist with the Kansas City, Missouri Police, Department. In her five years with the department, she has implemented and managed most of KCPD's social media accounts and strategy. She previously worked as a newspaper reporter covering crime, courts, and schools. She can be contacted at sarah.boyd@kcpd.org or 816-889-6133. In early 2012, I heard more and more of my friends talking about Pinterest. I didn't use it personally, and I didn't think it was a viable platform for a law enforcement agency. The U.S. Army changed my mind. I saw how they were using Pinterest to tell their story and target an audience they otherwise may have missed, and I believed it was something Kansas City Police could do, too. It also was becoming too big to ignore. Pinterest now is the 16th most popular Web site in the United States, according to AppAppeal.com. Law enforcement, like the military, is majority male. Combined with their duties enforcing laws, ...

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Recently, an Idaho State agency chose to shut down its Facebook page. Managers said the page was taking too much time and employee resources. The problem wasn't too many issues - just one. The agency found its Facebook page had become a venting opportunity for citizens with strong opinions about an ongoing, emotional and controversial topic, and it overwhelmed the agency's ability to manage the page. An Idaho state legislator also ran into something similar when he introduced a controversial bill that attracted national news attention, prompting activists from around the world to inundate his page with a huge number of mainly negative comments. So what if an agency's Facebook page gets overwhelmed by hundreds or thousands of comments, passionate over a single issue? The topic was brought up recently among those of us who manage Facebook pages here in the City of Boise. One of my city colleagues had met a PIO at a recent training conference who had faced the situation and managed it without deactivat ...

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Earlier this month we talked about the little things you can do on Facebook when it comes to interacting through social media with your community. Now let’s look at Twitter. Twitter has some restrictions when it comes to communication, but that just means you have to get creative. Twitter’s biggest restriction is space. Where you have lots of room to like, share and tag on Facebook, you only have 140 characters on Twitter. That can make it difficult to do some of the below suggestions, but that doesn’t make it impossible. So here are a few little things you can do on Twitter to interact with your community: * Retweet all the tweets from people who thank you or compliment you for something. This is a quick way you can acknowledge you’ve seen their tweet, thank them for it AND share it with your followers, thus sharing a positive comment about your agency with an even larger audience. You should also thank people when they mention you for ‘Follow Friday.’ Follow ...

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How many of you have ever had a negative story about your department or the way your officers handled an incident spin out of control in the media? It stinks. Traditionally, it is difficult to “set the record straight” without opening yourself and your department up to further criticism. How many of your departments have made a good arrest or had something positive happen in the community, yet you couldn’t get the local media to publish the story? I am sure most of you can recall these issues happening in your community. With the advancing use of social media by law enforcement agencies, police departments can bypass the media and go straight to the people to inform, explain, and clarify. Social media is the great equalizer. Social media can give police departments the tools they need to get their message out, to clarify the facts, and to promote the good work that their department and staff is doing in the community. Traditional media outlets are not our enemies as some in law enforcemen ...

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T is for Twitter. We could all recognize it. That little blue “t” icon that could be found across the Web, always promising to lead us to the wonderful world of 140 characters. But, as with all things social media, things change.

Twitter has decided to trade the “t” icon for the Twitter bird. So, if you are using the old icon on your Web site or blog, head on over to https://twitter.com/about/resources/logos and make the change to the new icon.

Crime rates and enforcement actions alone have never been the best evidence of a successful police department, but they always seem to be our go-to barometer. Annual reports are laden with pie graphs and bar charts comparing this year’s stats with years past. Crime is, after all, the business of law enforcement. It’s what we care about, and it’s what our customers care about. Or is it?   What crime stats don’t say is what (generally) is at the heart of citizen satisfaction with police, and that is community safety, quality of life, and police responsiveness. Crime stats also don’t say what is (generally) important to police – citizen trust, engagement, and safety. Look at your mission statement. It surely goes beyond “crime” and “enforcement,” perhaps focusing on community safety, quality of life, and departmental integrity. But how to gauge those lofty ideals? A complete discussion of what police should measure and how is beyond the sc ...

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One of the most important things we do in life is learn. We learn from our mistakes, we learn from the experience of those around us, we learn from experts. We have an incredible capacity for learning and many reasons for doing so. I have never met a successful person who has accomplished anything without learning and I have never talked to an expert on any subject who thinks that they’ve learned all there is in any given course of study or expertise. Learning is still being done on subjects that have been solidified in our existence for centuries. In policing we continually learn about human behaviour, officer safety, and crime prevention. So you can understand that if we are still learning about things that should be second nature to us, it stands to reason we must educate ourselves about social media and how to best utilize the power that it holds. I have been teaching social media use for nearly three years in both formal and informal environments and I know that I haven’t even come c ...

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So yet again another social media-type Web site is gaining in popularity. Pinterest. This site has skyrocketed with users in the past couple of months. So much so that those that want to create an account have to submit their request via e-mail and wait a couple of days for an acceptance reply. The reason? Probably to control the amount of users so it doesn’t affect the servers. So what is Pinterest? Basically it allows users to create customized themed boards to pin their images, video, and other objects to. So if you like a recipe, you can “pin” it to your virtual pin board. Usually if you click through the picture you can visit the site to get that recipe or piece of clothing you like. So how is this beneficial to law enforcement? Good question. The demographics of the users of Pinterest show that users are predominately women. If anything, agencies should reserve their name to avoid copycat sites poising to be law enforcement. A couple of departments have already set up boards, the ...

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