Feed a Family, Feed a Community

Posted on April 27, 2010 by Christa Miller

Photo by Matt Hagen via Flickr

Remember Bozeman? The Montana city with so much social media controversy? First, the town was called out all over the Web for demanding not only access to its employees’ social pages, but also their account passwords. Then, a Bozeman police officer resigned after public outcry over his poorly worded Facebook status update.

Bozeman police are again in the news, but not for social media. This time, the highlight is for an officer who went beyond his sworn duties to help a fellow human being—after he’d arrested him.

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Media-friendliness as Force Multiplier

Posted on April 13, 2010 by Christa Miller

Photo by emples via Flickr

I can always tell within minutes of an interview how media-friendly my source is. If they engage in small talk, that indicates that they’re interested in their interviewer. If they’re interested in me, and we establish a rapport, that makes it much more likely that they’ll volunteer information. They won’t stick rigidly to my questions, and in the silence that follows an answer, they’ll speak first. (Yes, cops too. Really! Surprised?)

What does this have to do with social media?

A police source who allows him- or herself to be engaged in more of a conversation with me than an interview recognizes the importance of putting information out there. They want the public to hear it, and they trust me to help them tell it.

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Flashmobs: Silly But Dangerous, or Unheard Voices?

Posted on March 31, 2010 by Christa Miller

Photo by philippe leroyer via Flickr

Flashmobs have been trouble for police in a number of cities for about a year. The New York Times sums them up nicely:

It started innocently enough seven years ago as an act of performance art where people linked through social-networking Web sites and text messaging suddenly gathered on the streets for impromptu pillow fights in New York, group disco routines in London, and even a huge snowball fight in Washington.

But these so-called flash mobs have taken a more aggressive and raucous turn [in Philadelphia] as hundreds of teenagers have been converging downtown for a ritual that is part bullying, part running of the bulls: sprinting down the block, the teenagers sometimes pause to brawl with one another, assault pedestrians or vandalize property.

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Law Enforcement and Social Media: Helping Without Hovering

Posted on March 16, 2010 by Christa Miller

Photo by MariSheibley via Flickr

Public safety is often about changing relationships: the relationships people have with each other and with things they do for fun.

I realized this as I contemplated how to tell my 6-year-old son that he should not, if invited, enter our neighbor’s home alone. The neighbor is nice. If I say that people are not always so nice once you are alone with them, he will not look at the neighbor the same way again. He may even be upset with me for that perception.

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Like KCPD, Be There Before the Crisis

Posted on March 3, 2010 by Christa Miller

Photo by kpwerker via Flickr

Social media consultants often tell clients to “be there before you need to be there.” What we mean is, be where customers and constituents are, talking to them and building relationships with them, before crisis makes them demand your presence there.

Pre-social media, smart police chiefs and public information officers built these kinds of relationships with news media. They kept an eye on what reporters were writing and saying about them and worked with reporters to generate stories.

And when things went sideways, they made sure reporters had as much information as was reasonable and appropriate from the police point of view.

This was, and still is, transparency.

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