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

Comments

[twitter.com/christammiller]

Chief, Nixle updates can be pushed to Twitter. Conceivably you can use Nixle as your primary microblogging outlet and use Twitter as a secondary (leave it running so you can respond to @s but don't think you have to take time to post in both places).

Mike knows better than I do about the labor-intensiveness of podcasting, but it strikes me as a very versatile tool (e.g. able to be used for crime prevention tips, as well as during crisis situations). I hope you continue to look into it as another channel, even if you can't commit to a regular schedule.