Social media is frequently seen by the law enforcement community as a tool for investigation or straightforward information sharing. While it certainly has clear value in those regards, social platforms are always evolving, as are the purposes they can serve.
They might not always provide instant gratification, but social media channels can help strengthen community relationships in any number of ways, establish a new dimension to a police department’s presence in the lives of local citizens, and ultimately help solve more crimes.
According to data from the IACP, more than 90 percent of law enforcement agencies use some form of social media. A 2016 report from IACP and the Urban Institute found that 91 percent of police departments use it to notify the public of safety concerns, 89 percent use the technology for community outreach and citizen engagement, and 86 percent use it for public relations and reputation management.1
“It’s hard sometimes to get people involved, come to meetings, but with social media you can maintain your normal lifestyle and still be involved,” said Lieutenant Christopher Cook, public information officer for the Arlington Police Department (APD) in Texas and general chair for the IACP Public Information Officers Section. “We don’t want to just push information out. We want to engage, have people help us solve crimes and come to events.”2
Social media can mean different things, but, generally speaking, the term can apply to any form of electronic communication through which users share information or other content. Lieutenant Cook and APD are leaders in adopting and leveraging social media, dating back to their first Facebook account in 2011.
The department is consistently recognized as one of the most social media-savvy police agencies in the United States. Among its accolades, the department was recognized for three consecutive years (2012–2014) for the Most Innovative Use of Social Media by the Texas Center for Digital Government.3
When it comes to social media planning, one size does not fit all. Whether for one social channel or several, effective strategies are based on location, demographics, staff knowledge and bandwidth, and an agency’s objectives for creating a presence on a given platform. Each social media channel has its own distinctive attributes.
“We try to take the news and bring it to where people are at,” Lieutenant Cook said. “It’s easier to put public safety information out through a tweet than through typing up a news release and hoping people will cover it. Law enforcement is slow to adapt to change sometimes, but you can see more departments starting to embrace this.”4
When APD created its first Facebook account, it was strictly as a tool to recruit new officers, but, over time, it morphed into something bigger.
According to Lieutenant Cook, the department’s Facebook account now boasts more than 103,000 fans.5
The agency’s Facebook account is frequently thought of as an investigative tool, but also provides extensive tools for communicating with fans—those who have “liked” the profile page—in the community and beyond. With the opportunities for users to post entire photo collections and large swaths of text—not to mention
the 2 billion monthly users that make it the planet’s top social media destination—Facebook provides the easiest and most versatile path for social communication.6 The recently expanded Facebook Live tool also allows users to upload streaming video.
Facebook may have the most versatility, but that does not necessarily make it the best tool for every agency.
According to Marc Marty, a police sergeant and social media educator blogging on LawEnforcement.social, Twitter is nothing less than “the best tool for Emergency Management on the internet.”7
Unlike Facebook or other platforms, Twitter is designed to inform and interact with other users on a minute-to-minute basis, with tweets easily shareable beyond the group that previously self-selected an interest by following the account. The site’s recent decision to double its character limit from 140 to 280 also expands the capacity for text.
On Twitter, comments and conversations can arise more readily than in other channels. That can be a double-edged sword, and one for which social media managers should be prepared.
On one hand, it can be relatively easy to attract an audience with a good tweet or ongoing idea. For example, in 2011, APD coined the term “tweetalong,” used to describe a virtual ride-along experience conducted through Twitter. The idea had staying power and still occurs today.8
On the other hand, citizens can and do seek out local police Twitter accounts with both positive and negative feedback. Although there is nothing inherently wrong with this discourse, Lieutenant Cook advises that those who monitor the accounts be prepared to respond constructively and diplomatically to any public input.
“If people message us, we try to acknowledge them,” said Lieutenant Cook of APD’s Twitter account, which now has about 116,000 followers. “Somebody tweeted us last to say they saw an officer talking on his phone. We explained that that is not illegal, although texting is. That person may not have liked law enforcement very much, but it showed we were still willing to speak with him.”9
According to the IACP and Urban Institute survey, 58 percent of agencies that use social media do so for recruitment and applicant vetting purposes.10
If recruiting and networking are the goals of a social media strategy, then LinkedIn should be a key element. The world’s largest social networking site for professionals now has about 500 million users and an average of 10 million job postings at any given time.11
Although the site is not overly robust beyond the professional networking functions, it does have a virtual stranglehold on the recruitment and hiring segment of the social market. With user-friendly connecting and messaging forums, the site is easy to use. According to a 2016 survey created by recruiting software firm SocialTalent and recruiter Alexander Mann Solutions, 97 percent of recruiting professionals use LinkedIn to seek out and acquire talent.12
Instagram is the most popular social channel for uploading and sharing images, making it a common choice for agencies looking to distribute pictures from department events and community activities.
However, it can be easy for an organization’s photos to fall into monotony. Experts recommend avoiding the “grip and grin” trap. “We look for innovative approaches that will resonate with followers,” Lieutenant Cook said. “If you put up one photo a week of a smiling officer, that doesn’t engage people.”13
Instead, focus on “shareable” content that centers around a theme or directive, like a post associated with the popular “Back the Blue” social campaign or simply asking followers to thank an officer for his or her work. “We include contests or things where we are asking for their input,” Lieutenant Cook said. “We find people are more likely to comment or share if there’s some kind of call to action.”14
YouTube
Just as Instagram is the most popular destination for images, YouTube is the one-stop-shop for video.
The Google-owned site now offers content options that go well beyond the user-generated material that was once its bread and butter, but any individual or group can still create a YouTube account and begin uploading video.
APD regularly produces a YouTube program titled “Inside APD,” each installment of which ranges in run time from one to three minutes and focuses on different aspects of police work and APD units and activities.
Like text or still images, video can deliver just about any message or tone. APD uses its YouTube account, Lieutenant Cook says, to help convey police stories that do not always find their way to the public through traditional channels. “We like to look for positive stories,” Lieutenant Cook said. “There’s only so much room for positive stories on any regular newscast. But cops are doing great things out here.”15
Snapchat
Perhaps the newest major social media sensation, Snapchat is frequently associated, in a law enforcement context, with its status as an unintentional (but effective) haven for child predators and other criminals.16 That view is mainly because of the app’s unique feature, which causes content to be automatically and permanently deleted shortly after it is shared.
Still, Snapchat is the most popular social media choice for teenagers. According to a 2017 survey from RBC Capital Markets, more teens (79 percent) said they had a Snapchat account than any other type of social media. (Instagram was second with 73 percent, while Facebook was well behind at 57 percent.)17
Relatively few law enforcement agencies use new social platforms such as Snapchat, but Lieutenant Cook said departments should be open to experimentation as a way of reaching new—and younger—eyes and ears in their communities.
“Teenagers have really evolved,” he said. “They are on Snapchat and Instagram now. To reach these types of audiences, we have to adapt as well. Nine times out of ten, when I see a youth at one of our mentoring events or another one of our events, when I ask them how they found out about it, they say they saw it on social media.”18 ♦
Notes:
1KiDeuk Kim, Ashlin Oglesby-Neal, and Edward Mohr, 2016 Law Enforcement Use of Social Media Survey: A Joint Publication by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Urban Institute (Washington, DC: Urban Institute, 2017).
2Christopher Cook (public information officer, Arlington Police Department), telephone interview, February 12, 2018.
3Arlington (TX) Police Department (APD), Media Office.
4Cook, interview.
5Cook, interview.
6Josh Constine, “Facebook Now Has 2 Billion Monthly Users…and Responsibility,” TechCrunch, June 27, 2017.
7Marc Marty, Law Enforcement Social, “Twitter’s 280 Characters and Emergency Management,” November 26, 2017, https://lawenforcement.social/blog/twitter-s-280-characters-emergency-management.
8APD, Media Office.
9Cook, interview.
10Kim, Oglesby-Neal, and Mohr, 2016 Law Enforcement Use of Social Media Survey.
11Ingrid Lunden, “LinkedIn Hits 500M Member Milestone for its Social Network for the Working World,” TechCrunch, April 24, 2017.
12Social Talent, Alexander Mann Solutions, 2016 Global Recruiting Survey, 2016.
13Cook, interview.
14Cook, interview.
15Cook, interview.
16Jeremy Hobson, “Snapchat ‘Has Become a Haven’ for Child Predators, Criminal Justice Scholar Says,” National Public Radio, WBUR, January 22, 2018.
17 RBC Capital Markets, LLC, Internet Social Butterflies: Highlights from Our Third Social Media Survey, December 8, 2017.
18Cook, interview.
Please cite as
Scott Harris, “Social Media: Finding What Works for You,” Product Feature, The Police Chief 85, no. 4 (April 2018): 52–55.
