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...
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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...
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A recent (June 16) Twitter post from @MountainViewPD caught my eye: “MVPD Followers: Please do not do @replies to the MVPD tweets. We do not have the resources to respond to them in a timely manner.” Yowza. Twitter is a conversation medium; how can you want to avoid conversation? Yet a look at MVPD’s...
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The Munhall (Pennsylvania) News Watch posted this Pittsburgh Tribune Review article recently: While police departments elsewhere turn to Web sites such as Twitter and Facebook, some local chiefs are sticking to automated phone messages as the best way to get fast alerts to many people at once. “If you want something right away, a...
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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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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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