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Law Enforcement to Community Communication – dialogue, not monologue

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Brad Rutledge

For many law enforcement agencies, when asked if they have a social media program, their answer will be something like, “yes, we have a Facebook page, and Twitter account.” A good start, but as a standalone, this doesn’t exactly define a program.

Many agencies struggle to gain traction once they launch an agency Facebook page. Take for example, the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office that was recently featured in the PublicEngines Definitive Guide to Social Media Engagement for Law Enforcement Agencies 2013. The agency launched its Facebook page, but after three years, only had about 200 Likes, and almost no engagement or interaction with the community. Almost by accident, the Agency went from 200 Likes to several hundreds when hurricane Sandy hit as people in the community were searching for credible sources about the storm and public safety issues.

We can learn from the spike in Likes and engagement Niagara experienced, and it can be done without the help of a hurricane!

The Guide to Social Media Engagement list six ideas for growing your audience and engaging with them:

Hold an Launch Event. Many agencies have successfully hosted a social media launch event (Facebook) by tying into an existing community events. Another example was when the Virginia State Police Department launched its Facebook page on the anniversary of a community-known unsolved homicide.
Obtain Publicity. Most agencies have good working relationship with local media. By issuing a news announcement & having news stories about the social media initiative, agencies can gain awareness, likes/followers, and begin the engagement process.
Promote Social Media Profiles on Agency Website. In addition to making people aware the profiles exist, agencies can also ask questions on the website, and ask the community to provide comments on its social sites.
Use Email to Promote Social Sites & Engage. From including links to social sites in email signatures, to direct outreach emails asking for Likes, or community-related questions, email can be a great way to communicate.
Maintaining Engagement. By providing consistent and predicable information that is useful, actionable, compelling, and sharable with others, fans and followers will begin to anticipate and look forward to these posts. Engagement is sure to follow.
Use CityConnect. All citizens to access all of the agencies social media and web accounts to citizens through their smart phones to make connecting and engagement easy, and always available. CityConnect is an agency-branded mobile app that does just that. From allowing people to deliver crime tips, to accessing CrimeReports, and even for emergency updates, there is no better way to connect with people today than through their smart phone.

The full Guide contains more details, and useful case examples. You can download it here.

Over 100 LEAs participate in a Global Tweet-along Tweet-athon March 22

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Jeff Beaver

Map of tweet-a-thon participants wordwide

Map of tweet-a-thon participants worldwide

Starting at 8 a.m. on March 22, law enforcement agencies around the world connected via Twitter to participate in a 24-hour Tweet-a-thon to bring attention to the use of social media by law enforcement. Throughout the day, more than 100 law enforcement agencies from the US, United Kingdom, Canada, Sweden, Iceland and Australia tweeted messages, photos and video of 911 calls being answered by officers on patrol using the hashtag #poltwt; twitter fans were encouraged to submit questions as they followed along.

A tweet from a tweetalong hosted by Rapid City PD

Tweetalong: The Ride Along of the Digital Age

With the advent of social media the traditional [civilian] ride-along has gone digital. In a ride along, a civilian would spend a shift as a passenger in a police car on patrol observing the workday of an officer. With a tweet-along officers on patrol chronicle the crime fighting activities of their shift–responding to 911 calls, chasing fugitives, making arrests–by tweeting photos, video and other information in real-time for twitter fans to follow along.

In recent years, the tweetalong has become somewhat of a booming phenomenon among law enforcement as agencies increasingly recognize its potential in showing the public a side of law enforcement that they don’t often see.

“Anytime we have the chance to give the public a glimpse of how we do our jobs and the type of calls our officers respond to is a good thing. This Tweetalong will allow the LVMPD to connect with its community in an exciting, real time way while also providing education” said Las Vegas PD Sheriff Doug Gillespie.

By hosting tweetalongs, police departments like the Las Vegas PD help to improve their agency’s transparency and rapport within the community by sharing a personal and sometimes gritty on-the-scene perspective with the community. Tweetalongs also enable the community to engage with the agency in real-time by tweeting questions and comments to officers out on the beat.

Organizer Lauri Stevens, founder of LAWS Communications hopes [the] global Tweet-a-thon will bring greater awareness to law enforcement’s growing community outreach efforts through social media. “We hope it sends the message to community members that…they should use [social media] as another means of communicating with local authorities” she said.

Encouraging law enforcement use of social media

While twitter use and the ‘tweetalong’ is becoming a common practice for law enforcement agencies around the world, many agencies have yet to become active on the social media platform. According a recent survey by International Association of Chiefs of Police, just less than half of local law enforcement agencies are actively using twitter to engage the public. Participants of the global tweet-a-thon, like the Middleton WI PD, are looking to change that.

“We hope our participation continues to positively influence the rapidly growing acknowledgement, acceptance and use of social media by public safety agencies around the world” -said Keith Cleasby, social media manager of Middleton WI PD.

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To learn more about how your agency can use Twitter and other tools to maximize community engagement in the social media-verse we encourage you to download our “Definitive Guide to Social Media Engagement for Law Enforcement”

Using Social Media in Law Enforcement, a Guide

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Brad Rutledge

Most organizations over the past several years have been asking a lot of questions about using social media. For many, there’s a general feeling that their organization should be doing something. That’s a good start, and many stall out there, because of not knowing what to do.

Thankfully, now that organizations have been implementing various social media strategies for a few years, we now have the opportunity to learn from what others have done right, and of course what they’ve done wrong.

I’ve worked with a variety of companies over the years on developing and implementing a social media strategy. I wondered how unique Law Enforcement would be in its approach to using social media, which is why I was excited to review The Definitive Guide to Social Media Engagement for Law Enforcement Agencies, published by PublicEngines. Below are a few things I’ve learned so far.

The Same Pitfalls

It makes sense to learn from The Guide that Law Enforcement Agencies face similar hurdles, challenges, and make the same mistakes as retailers, businesses, other government agencies, and even celebrities, when trying to use social media. The Guide outlines three common mistakes:

The Set-it and Forget-it Agency. We’ve all seen examples of this when we visit a site or page, and the content is old – like months, or even over a year since the last post. In many ways, a neglected site, is worse than no site at all.
The Spammer Agency. When I see a company that starts posting too much useless information, I imagine that someone said we need to post 14 times per day, and they purchased some software tool that allows them to pre-load hundreds of posts. I typically turn these alerts off, and it leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.
The Serial Experimenter Agency. In this instance, you can see there is no real plan in place – just ideas. While the agency is making attempts to do something it comes off as unorganized, confused, and uncontrolled. It can’t be maintained, and the audience goes away.

These are similar issues any organization faces, so it represents lessons we can learn from. On the flip side, there are some specific things that are unique to Law Enforcement that need to be considered in your planning.

Unique to Law Enforcement

In the Identify Your Goals and Objectives section of The Guide, I was thrilled to see specific examples that are unique to Law Enforcement. In my experience, setting goals and objectives can be extremely difficult because social media is so new, and everything moves so quickly. The examples can help to kick-start the process of designing a program that will work for your agency. The Guide lists goal examples of creating public awareness of the agency’s policing/safety efforts, creating greater transparency and more open dialogue, to encouraging citizens to help with crime stopper efforts through tips, and even to improve police services through greater collaboration.

For more information on these topics, I encourage you to download The Definitive Guide to Social Media Engagement for Law Enforcement Agencies here.

Animated Bullying Poem

Posted on February 22, 2013 by admin

This video, created in partnership with spoken word poet Shane Koyczan, is a poignant example of what a child and adolescent feels when they are bullied in school. Shane himself was bullied as a young child, ”My experiences with violence in schools still echo throughout my life, but standing to face the problem has helped me in immeasurable ways,” Koyczan writes on the “To This Day” website.

It all begs the question, if we start in our own homes with teaching our children the tenets of respect, love, and kindness, might we rid our schools of bullying in this present generation? And if we did that, might we in connection lower crime in our communities and make them a safer place to live? Watch the video and then tell us what you think – how do you help solve the bullying epidemic?

Tips to Boost and Maintain TipSoft Use within the Community

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Jeff Beaver

If You Build it They will Come…

TipSoft is a great app that enables citizens to help fight crime with their smartphones, but without adequate community adoption and use of TipSoft, law enforcement agencies may be missing out on the benefit of a mobile citizenry that can feed crime tips and photos from the streets. As useful as TipSoft can be in your community, TipSoft alone isn’t one of those ‘if you build it, they will come’ apps, nor should it be a ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ endeavor– getting the most out of TipSoft in your community requires a bit of promotion to get citizens on-board as well as PR efforts to keep users active. To get the most out of TipSoft, here are a few tips to boost and maintain TipSoft use within your community:

Advertise

No, we don’t mean putting millions of dollars into a super-bowl commercial. But still you’ve got to let your community know about TipSoft and that using it can help solve and prevent crimes, or even provide life-saving information to the community. Like the City of Appleton WI, you can start by hosting a press release on the city/police department website to let everybody know what TipSoft is, how it can help, and where to get it (see picture below).

Additionally, reach out to local media during launch to ensure they help get the message out. While press releases can be helpful, they can also get lost in the clutter of your website. To get your citizens attention, consider putting a web banner on the home page. For inspiration checkout the banner hosted on Scranton PD’s homepage. Your agency can continue the campaign by blasting the message out on your city/department Facebook page and Twitter feed for maximum reach.

Take Your Message to the Streets

While the agency website and social media channels are good places to start building TipSoft awareness among those citizens who are already engaged (online) with local law enforcement, arguably many of your citizens do not have frequent contact with your agency/department whether online or in person. For that reason, take your TipSoft message out into the community to generate awareness and adoption; the prime opportunity being community events like National Night Out, Take Back the Night and other community gatherings such as holiday parades, cookouts and festivals. At your police booth/tent, consider having flyers with a QR code for people with smartphones to scan and download the TipSoft app in a jiffy.

Let’em Know When TipSoft Tips and Alerts Pay Off

While a promotion effort is important in spurring community adoption, maintaining community interest is crucial to keeping those crime tips coming. An easy way is to let the community in on the action: Did a recent anonymous tip help catch a predator? Did a TipSoft alert deliver information that saved a life? Share the good news on Facebook and Twitter! When community TipSoft participation pays off in either fighting crime or public safety let the community know that anonymous tips and community alerts are effective and appreciated by the police. Posting the good news will let the community see that their TipSoft participation is meaningful and will inspire continued use.

Hit a home run with TipSoft?

Let us know what other tips and insights can help fellow agencies successfully implement TipSoft in their communities. Use the comments section below to share your best practices.