The Social Media Beat

Perhaps you saw this tweet on Wednesday, April 17th:   Despite reports to the contrary there has not been an arrest in the Marathon attack. @Boston_Police To their credit, despite trying to manage a chaotic week in their city, Boston Police were on top of monitoring social media. The agency was able to quickly jump on Twitter and renounce misinformation. Perhaps you also saw a tweet like this coming shortly afterwards: #CNN is reporting that#letsgetitright has won the 2013 Kentucky Derby! You heard it here first. @The_LifeofRiley  (tweeted 4-18, two weeks before the Derby) It's funny to read but addresses a very real and serious issue we in law enforcement need to confront in this day of instant, fragmented release of news. It may not be factual. It was very reassuring to read in an article posted April 18th on examiner.com: Follow the Boston Police Department on Twitter @Boston_Police and the FBI @FBIPressoffice for the most accurate information on the Boston Marathon bombings ...

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We are always trying to come up with new ways to engage our audience. In law enforcement, it's ways to keep our residents and those around us updated on what is happening in the City of Boca Raton. Over the last couple of years we have gone from just a website, to a news section on the page, www.bocapolice.com. Then we added a Twitter page, www.twitter.com/bocapolice and Facebook, www.facebook.com/bocapolice. We also created a You Tube page, www.youtube.com/bocapolice to upload videos of crimes and educational videos. Now we turn the page, and enter into Social Media 2.0 in Law Enforcement. On a daily basis we post the last 24 hours of the blotter on our website for the media and anyone else who wants to see it. But who has time to sit there and read through 30-40 crimes every morning. So we have come up with our own news minute, a quick recap on video of the last 24 hours. We call it “Boca Beat in 60 beats.” It’s simple. Look at the blotter for the last 24 hours, find some good arrest ...

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Richmond Police recently did its first virtual ride along, also known as a TweetAlong to give the community an idea of what its officers deal with during an average shift. To some it may seem a little passé since many police agencies have done virtual ride alongs for a while now, but it was a first for us and it was a big deal. We’d like to share our successful experience so that others who are contemplating doing it can learn about what we did and figure out how it could work for their agency. We decided that since this was our first foray into live tweeting a patrol, I would do the tweeting as the PIO, and the officer would just go about his regular duties. Next we had to find an officer who would be interested in having his actions essentially live tweeted for a few hours, and one who wouldn’t mind answering question from the Twitterverse. We chose Master Police Officer Al Joyner, a nearly 20-year veteran officer who, though he was on Facebook, didn’t know that much about ...

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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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When it comes to what’s popular on social media sites, it’s all about the visuals. That’s why the still relatively new site Pinterest is taking off so quickly, and why police need to consider using that platform as a way to reach and educate its community. We at Richmond Police signed up last year and have been figuring it out and trying new things as time permitted. We’ve learned that animal photo boards, especially our K-9 and mounted, are extremely popular and get lots of likes and repins. No surprise there, but it has also been interesting to learn that our historical photo boards are also quite popular. We have a board featuring the photos of all of our police chiefs with a short blurb about each of them. We also created a board of photos to honor all of our fallen officers, and we’re in the process of creating a board full of all of the historical photos we can find. We’ve been fortunate recently to have some Pinterest-savvy interns in our office who not onl ...

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In the “olden” days, the primary way for a citizen to complain or bring a concern to their police department was to come to the department or stop an officer if they see one. In the following years, the telephone became the primary means to communicate issues and concerns. As we entered the technology revolution, e-mail took over the number one spot. However, all of that has changed with the proliferation of social media. This is especially true if your department engages the community using social media. Now citizens can easily contact the department with an issue or concern in a very public way. In the past, those contacting a department about an issue or concern were never really sure who they should contact or if they would ever receive a response, depending on the nature of the issue. However, today since the issue or concern is being reported publicly on the department’s social media channels, most departments are quick to respond to prevent the issue from escalating. This is true f ...

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One of the most important things we have is also the most fragile. It can takes years to build and seconds to destroy. We have an immense amount of control over it and yet unforeseen forces can damage it. Careers have been destroyed by it and empires built upon it.  Reputation. We know how important a positive reputation is and how easily a great reputation can be compromised. It astounds me that more agencies aren’t using social media with reputation management in mind, but to each their own.   I have seen many well-intentioned tweets made by agencies and officers that have been changed or manipulated by members of the public, which have completely changed the meaning, and or the intent of the original tweet. Credible and responsible people will indicate a change by using the common MT (modified tweet). Gone unnoticed, this can cause a communication nightmare. I won’t beleaguer the point, because what I want to write about is a new toy on the net that can rip apart your reputation ...

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One of the main purposes we in law enforcement use social media is to engage our community. Residents, businesses and those that come here to visit our restaurants and retail areas. But sometimes we stop and ask, are those people really getting the message. We have over 8,000 followers on Twitter but only about 2,300 on Facebook. It varies with each department but for us it seems our message is better received by our Facebook audience even though we have less followers. Why? It’s my belief when you are following a lot of people on Twitter, many tweets get lost in that continuous stream from everyone you are following. There are ways around it. Your followers can save you as a favorite or if they are using an application like TweetDeck or HootSuite they can set up a favorite column to follow your tweets. We do notice the media has done this because as soon as we tweet something out they are on it. Now Facebook is a different beast. We are able to post updates and actual stories to go along with th ...

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The phrases “big data” and “open data” are everywhere these days. So too are online challenges and contests to solve civic problems through technology. Could just be me, because I’m interested in these topics, but they sure seem to be all over the place – from blogs and tweets, to magazine articles and formal reports. Open data counts as social media. By making data publicly available, then welcoming and encouraging the public to download, analyze, and provide feedback on it, organizations are creating a new level of public interaction, engagement, and transparency. Several large jurisdictions are leading the way in open data, including crime data.     •  New York City has one of the most comprehensive open data policies           in the country     •  Philadelphia releases data on Part I crimes on a daily basis     •  The New Jersey State Police puts weekl ...

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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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