The Columbus Dispatch recently ran a story about the Ohio State Patrol issuing strict guidelines for officers’ personal social media accounts. The guidelines come on the heels of a controversy surrounding a female officer posting sexually suggestive photos of herself on her MySpace page. Social media also recently had a hand in circulating a picture taken by Midland, TX, deputies of a scantily-clad waitress holding a police rifle—an incident that led to the firing of one officer and the suspension of four others. Is it any wonder that some law enforcement agencies are wary of endorsing the very media that publicizes their shortcomings?
But, even beyond photo sharing at the click of a button, it doesn’t take to long for anyone to find a video, blog post, or tweet that criticizes local law enforcement or openly publicizes law enforcement missteps and blunders. The fact of the matter is, social media not only opens up a great communication and outreach tool for law enforcement, it also opens up an agency to public criticism and vitriolic rants.
Rants and Personal Grudges
Many agencies want to create a web portal for open, public communication, but opening that portal comes with a whole host of problems. For instance, LEAs want the dialogue to be public, but they also don’t want it to degrade into rants by citizens with personal grudges. They already receive enough public criticism from local media, city councils, and everyday encounters with citizens, and they don’t want to open themselves up to more through a tool that is meant for community outreach and information.
Further, monitoring, editing, or deleting comments, on a Facebook wall or blog, can lead to community outcries of censorship. And a recent PR debacle by the Skittles Company illustrates the dangers of simply opening the gates of social media right on your front page.
Building Trust
Despite these potential pitfalls, opening a social media channel to the public shows great trust in the citizenry at large, and most citizens will respect that. What it all boils down to is trust. When a department shows trust in the community, the community shows trust in the department. Creating a Facebook page, blog, or twitter account sends a message to the public: We want to communicate with you and we care about your feedback. And when an agency sends a message like that, the public is more open to listening to and working with a department.
Simply publishing a public crime map, through a service like CrimeReports, shows citizens that their local police department trusts them with a large amount of crime data. In response, citizens use the information to protect themselves and their community, and are more open to working with law enforcement in their neighborhoods. Opening a two-way dialogue through other social media tools can further expand and enrich that trust, creating a safer community for citizens and a more law-enforcement-friendly public.
Get on the crime map at CrimeReports.com
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