Last week I talked about the importance of “listening” to your community, including taking into account a variety of factors about the community itself. It won’t be the last I discuss this topic, but I wanted to take some time to examine what Boca Raton PD is doing with all that data. Chief Dan Alexander,…
Monthly Archives: August 2009
Guest post: The social media officer
When Mike Vallez launched his social media blog a few weeks ago, I was struck by a comment he made in one of his first posts: “I would venture to guess that in the future you will have a social media police officer or many social media police officers that will be involved in “the…
Case study: Researching community in Arcadia, Calif.
Sgt. Tom Le Veque has been a believer in social media since he started using it to reach out to the public during contract negotiations. Administration has been a bit slower to adopt, however, so Le Veque went for middle ground: a blog run by the Arcadia Police Officers’ Association. Sgt. Le Veque’s introduction on…
Ssh… hear that?
This blog by a Portsmouth (Virginia) civilian points up how valuable the concept of “listening” is to modern police departments—all departments, not just those who are engaging the public on social networking sites. At the very least, rudeness is a common complaint among civilians. “That cop acted like he didn’t get his donut this morning,”…
Getting help with social media’s day to day
In the last few weeks I’ve explored why more law enforcement officers and agencies are not jumping on board the social media bandwagon; the dangers of official or unofficial officer use; and the importance of a good social media policy, whether or not your agency is officially using social media. What now? Social media is…
Transparency vs. anonymity
An interesting debate has cropped up over on ConnectedCops.net about whether police officers should be allowed to blog anonymously. It started with Lauri’s point in her post on elements of a social media policy (cross posted here and on her blog): 3. Identity. Some bloggers work anonymously, using pseudonyms or false screen names. Law enforcement…