The Social Media Beat

This guest blog comes from Rebecca Rosenblatt of the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office. Deputy Rosenblatt has been in law enforcement for the past eight years. She previously worked in patrol as a K9 handler for the Millbrae Police Department until the department was consolidated by the sheriff's office in early 2012. Deputy Rosenblatt is currently assigned as the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer, a full time position she tested for and was assigned to late last year. Though her job responsibilities are diverse, a key part of her daily routine is maintaining and updating the sheriff’s office website, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. The San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office, the agency for which I work, is located in what is commonly known as the Silicon Valley region of California. Silicon Valley is also home to many of technology’s heavy hitters, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube to name a few. At the onset, I couldn’t have told you the di ...

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This guest blog comes from Laura McElroy of the Tampa, Florida, Police Department. During her nine years with the department, Laura has strengthened community relations by developing a proactive approach to the public information office.  Her team utilizes mainstream and social media to ensure citizens are up to date on how police are fighting crime in their neighborhoods.  In 2012, Laura led a multi-agency Joint Information Center for the Republican National Convention. In this role, she utilized social media to highlight the positive action of law enforcement during the convention that typically generates negative publicity for law enforcement. Laura is a University of Florida graduate who spent 16 years as a television reporter and anchor in Gainesville, Sarasota, West Palm Beach, and Tampa. Fourteen Tampa police officers are now members of our brand new social media team.  I keep telling them that they belong to a cutting edge specialty team just without the extra pay! The team was ...

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Today’s guest post comes from Sergeant Dave Norris who has been with the San Mateo, California, Police Department since 1993. After serving in a variety of positions including Field Training Officer, Narcotics and Vice, and Investigations, he is currently assigned to Community and Media Relations. The position oversees SMPD’s Police Activities League, Civilian Volunteers, Neighborhood Watch, Plan Review for CPTED, School Resource Officer Programs, and “other projects as directed by the Chief.” He also handles Public Information and Social Media, having expanded SMPD’s Community Alert outreach from an email list of about 300 to over 13,000 direct subscribers across a number of social media platforms. The recent events in Boston have us all doing a “What worked? … What could we all do better?” evaluation of messaging and social media. Although Boston Police put out a great first message, news agencies provided fast and furious updates that were often inaccurat ...

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Lieutenant Zach Perron is the lead Public Information Officer for the Palo Alto (CA) Police Department, an agency of 85 sworn officers serving a community of about 65,000 residents.  The computer was invented in a garage three blocks from his office window, making Palo Alto the “Birthplace of Silicon Valley.”  Lieutenant Perron has worked with the command staffs of a number of local agencies to help their departments launch their social media outreach efforts.  You can reach him at zachary.perron@cityofpaloalto.org.   As Dionne Waugh pointed out last month in her blog post “Riding Along Via Twitter,” agencies all across the country are doing virtual ride-alongs.  We would like to share a unique spin we put on the idea recently. We launched our Twitter and Facebook accounts in March 2012 and have enjoyed remarkable success with them.  We’ve had two primary goals with the three Twitter virtual ride-alongs we’ve done: to increase transparenc ...

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Today’s guest post comes from Jennifer Styles, Project Specialist for the national Volunteers in Police Service (VIPS) Program at the International Association of Chiefs of Police. One of the many advantages of social media is being able to reach a large audience. With that large audience come unique opportunities to recognize your agency’s law enforcement volunteers. National Volunteer Week is April 21 through April 27, so now is a good time to think about thanking your volunteers.  Volunteer recognition is essentially the paycheck your volunteers receive for the work they do. Thanking them for their time and accomplishments is essential to retaining a strong, committed group of volunteers. You can magnify the impact of the recognition via social media and getting the message out to their friends, neighbors, families, and colleagues. Recognizing your volunteers publicly has the side benefits of sharing positive stories about your agency with the community and inspiring new volu ...

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Today's post comes from Chris Hsiung, a lieutenant with the Mountain View Police Department and the social media manager in charge of community engagement and growth through the police department's social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest). You can reach him at @chMtnViewPD. Chris holds a Bachelor's degree in Behavior Science & Sociology from San Jose State University and a Master's degree in eBusiness Management from Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, CA. The Mountain View Police Department has 97 sworn officers and serves a diverse and technology driven community located in the heart of Silicon Valley. There’s no question that social media is an effective tool for communicating with and engaging the communities that we all serve. The ability to engage in two-way communication with the public or instantly disseminate accurate information to the media and public has arguably been a “game changer” for law enforcement. As a law enforcement government enti ...

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Today’s guest post comes from Sergeant Dave Norris who has been with the San Mateo, California, Police Department since 1993. After serving in a variety of positions including Field Training Officer, Narcotics and Vice, and Investigations, he is currently assigned to Community and Media Relations. The position oversees SMPD’s Police Activities League, Civilian Volunteers, Neighborhood Watch, Plan Review for CPTED, School Resource Officer Programs, and “other projects as directed by the Chief.” He also handles Public Information and Social Media, having expanded SMPD’s Community Alert outreach from an email list of about 300 to over 13,000 direct subscribers across a number of social media platforms. In Part One of this blog, we discussed the Research and Direction Phase – subscribing to other agencies and evaluating their content for reference; and the Policy, Procedure, and Scope Phase, about how to take your time preparing and starting your venture in public mess ...

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Today’s guest post comes from Sergeant Dave Norris who has been with the San Mateo, California, Police Department since 1993. After serving in a variety of positions including Field Training Officer, Narcotics and Vice, and Investigations, he is currently assigned to Community and Media Relations. The position oversees SMPD’s Police Activities League, Civilian Volunteers, Neighborhood Watch, Plan Review for CPTED, School Resource Officer Programs, and “other projects as directed by the Chief.” He also handles Public Information and Social Media, having expanded SMPD’s Community Alert outreach from an email list of about 300 to over 13,000 direct subscribers across a number of social media platforms. At the recent IACP Conference, I noticed some amazing things being done by very talented folks all across the nation and (very effectively, I might add) by our Canadian "neighbours". There was also a popular curiosity about how to start a social media strategy for your law en ...

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Today’s guest post comes from Julie Parker, Director of the Media Relations Division for the Prince George's County, Maryland, Police Department. Responsible for media and public relations in a dynamic environment, Julie has incorporated the modern advances of social media in law enforcement that have created greater access, transparency, and accountability for the community and media. Julie serves as the PGPD's representative on the Crime Solvers, Inc. Board of Directors, a non-profit organization of community and business leaders that encourages greater community cooperation to close unsolved crimes.  Before joining the department, Julie worked as an Emmy-award winning general assignment reporter and anchor for ABC7 News & NewsChannel 8 in the Washington, D.C. market for 14 years. For the first time, the Prince George’s County, Maryland, Police Department, the 28th largest police department in the nation, held a virtual ride along called the PGPDTweetAlong. Armed only with an ...

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Today's guest blog post comes from Machelle Montgomery, Social Media Liaison for the Prince William County, Virginia, Police Department. This full-time position was developed in April of this year and is a part of the Public information Office. As a prior Intelligence Analyst for Prince William and Virginia State Police, she is also responsible for gathering Intel from social media sites and forwarding to the Department’s Intelligence Unit. Montgomery began her law enforcement career in 1989 and has an Associate’s degree in Criminal Justice. We all know a SHORT post goes a LONG way. However, there are times when it is necessary to have much more information. For this, the note feature of Facebook is fantastic. This feature allows you to edit or modify your post as frequently as necessary and you can add more than one photo to the same post. Currently, if you post on the timeline you are unable to go back and edit the post, should you find an error or perhaps want to update it with new inf ...

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