INSIDE the Lakeland Police Department

Community Policing - Defining the Social Media Community

Someone recently asked me why LakelandPD engages in social media - things like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, etc. I wanted to quickly reply with something like "why not?" but thought better of it. Still, it's a great question to consider.

The basic reason we engage in social media is because we are committed to community policing - a philosophy of engaging the community in a collaborative partnership to proactively solve neighborhood problems and improve our overall quality of life.

So what does that comment have to do with social media?

Contemporary police agencies are quickly realizing that social media is IS A COMMUNITY in and of itself as well as being a group that contains members from other communities in our area. Let me offer a further explanation.

One of the key elements to community policing is the need to identify what is a community. Here in our town, a community is more than just the entire city of Lakeland, and it is more than a collection of separate neighborhoods. Our city is filled with individual "communities" that identify with a common area, a specific social problem (for example, homelessness), common interests (military veterans), or other similarities (youth athletics or education). A community is not merely defined by a geographical boundary on a map but rather by things they have in common.

Using this definition, we try to reach out to all "communities" in our area to engage in mutual dialog. We believe social media is a rapidly expanding "community" in both our area of Lakeland and the global area of community policing. We're happy to join the discussions within social media outlets in an attempt to engage as many people as possible to help us solve problems and make our community a safe place to live, work, and raise a family.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

Social Media and Law Enforcement

I engaged in a most interesting dialog Friday morning with a visitor to my office. Michael Vallez had read our blog and wanted to stop by for a visit to discuss our social media policy at LakelandPD. I encourage you to visit his blog and learn more about his social media projects, particularly related to law enforcement.

For nearly 90 minutes we discussed how police departments can benefit from the explosion of social media to engage our communities in two-way conversation about a wide range of public safety issues. We spoke about the dynamic paradigm shift that social media is creating for society, how people establish relationships today via this media, and how law enforcement can either be on the front of this wave or get run over if we choose not to engage our customers.

Mike took pages of notes while we spoke, but in the end I think I got more out of our meeting than he did (though he was polite assured me that is not the case). In any event, he left us with quite a bit of information to digest as we constantly think of ways to expand and improve how we use social media at LakelandPD.

Thanks Mike for reaching out to us.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere