The cops are coming to Twitter. Last year, the Halifax Regional Police Department hired Lauren Leal, a graduate of Nova Scotia Community College’s PR program, to concentrate on social media, and Leal is now helping police administrators and staff sergeants learn the ropes of Twitter and Facebook. Deputy chief Chris McNeil told me at Monday’s police commission meeting that he follows me on Twitter, but he hasn’t yet started tweeting himself. “I’m seeing how it’s done,” he says.
In her presentation at the police commission meeting, Leal gave an overview of the possible uses of Twitter—coincidentally using my @Tim_Bousquet account as a positive example—and explained that social media can be used as an investigative tool (cops are trolling Facebook now), as a means to get information out quickly to the public and simply as an image enhancer.
Leal is the fourth full-time PR person working for the police, and in recent years the department has upped its communications output: In addition to emails issued each shift by watch commanders, the PR team puts out multiple press releases a day and issues video press releases as well.
At the same time, news media are slashing reporting staffs and cutting efforts to do original reporting, and so the temptation is to take the readily available cop PR output, repackage it, re-write press releases, interview handy communications staff and viola!, there’s a newspaper piece or the lead story on the supperhour news. It’s little wonder people in the community have a sense that crime is increasing, and nevermind stats that say otherwise.
So it’s ironic the cop PR machine was put into play this week to counter the sense of increased crime created in part by the cop PR machine. The department put out survey results that show that, contradicting the perception of increased crime, people actually feel as safe as ever. The survey results were tweeted by @HfxRegPolice.
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This article appears in Jun 7-13, 2012.
I wrote a note on my Facebook a couple weeks ago on my personal observations of police culture on the street downtown.
http://www.facebook.com/notes/john-wesley-…
I immediately got a note from HRP saying they disliked hearing stories about police behaving badly and citing many instances of the good works police do and the difficult circumstances they endure.
I was surprised, but it got an interesting conversation going.
Well they are public servants and they can suck it up or take another profession. If people don’t pay attention and critisize, than it’s a free for all for people to break rules and in the case of policeing, if they don’t do their jobs well, people can get hurt.
Cops need to be watched because none are perfect, and many are bad, like anyone in any job.
I understand that they do need to endure some difficult circumstances, but that is their choice.
Anyone with power needs to be checked, otherwise abuses are enevitable.
I’m totally fed up with how the police react whenever a small crowd gathers for a demonstration or public meeting. Their constant use of in-your-face use of video recording from the tope of the steps at Grand Parade for instance serves mainly to antagonize people.
Cry me a bloody river, Bill. When you consider that a goodly number of participants in any protest are vigorously recording the police, I’d have to say “Sauce for the goose…” All that video evidence is going to come in handy when the inevitable riot breaks out. Because I know that when protestors/demonstrators/activists inadvertently film their own kind breaking the law, they have no hesitation in turning the evidence over to the proper authorities. Right?