Some law enforcement agencies may be reluctant to jump into social media because they are unsure of how many customers are really online. What’s the point, they reason, if they’re communicating with only a tiny fraction of the population they serve? It’s a valid point. Committing already-thin resources to something that may not pay...
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Much of the focus on law enforcement use of social media is on police departments as a whole. From a community-relations standpoint, this is important—but police departments may be missing out on a valuable opportunity to brand themselves and law enforcement in general. For that, they might consider turning to individual experts. What’s an...
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American Police Beat’s recent blog about police pursuits (authored by Sgt. Timothy Long) caught my eye because of this passage: For the viewer, a police pursuit is a real-time drama with an unknown outcome…. But what if you are the one engaged in the pursuit? You and your decision-making capabilities are playing out for...
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Image by Getty Images via Daylife Could the Bay Area Rapid Transit have found a better way to manage the public relations disaster that was the shooting of an unarmed black man? This is up for debate—BART says no, PR professionals interviewed for the Contra Costa Times say yes—but thanks to the proliferation of...
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Image via Wikipedia Officer “Smith” has a blog entry up about a hypothetical “excessive force” situation. His sentiments have been echoed by many law enforcement officers: When the general public sees any such police action on the news, they need to make sure they know all the facts before they cry murder or excessive...
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When making policy on online officer activities, law enforcement administrators need to consider that blogs and tweets are not the only officer representations. More and more media outlets are online, too, naming officers in news articles about all kinds of community interactions–good and bad. A tale of two officers I first blogged about this...
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