INSIDE the Lakeland Police Department

Tweeting DUI Arrests - Good or Bad Idea?

While reviewing my Google news alerts this morning, I came across a blog posting that reported how DUI arrests in Mongtomery County, Texas will be posted on Twitter during the period between Christmas Eve and New Years Eve. If you are curious like I was and wondered where that county is located in the great state of Texas, think just north of Houston (which is in Harris County) and you are there.

The tweets are reportedly the product of the Montgomery County District Attorney, Brett Ligon, rather than any specific law enforcement agency there. A quick visit to the DA's Twitter page failed to show any arrest pics up to Sunday. At least one agency in the area, Denton PD, has mug shots all of its arrests posted on an "unofficial" Twitter page. The same mug shots are available in our local area as well, so this is really nothing new.

Public figures are used to living their lives in glass bowls and realize publicity will follow if they should get arrested. However, some will argue posting DUI arrests, or any arrest for that matter, is an intentional act of "shaming" with no real societal value if the arrestee is not a public figure. Others are quick to respond that such information is a public record in most areas and thus violates no law of confidentiality. I will leave that debate, as well as the argument of presumed innocent until found guilty, for others to join, but I am curious what you think about the concept of a law enforcement agency tweeting pics of specific arrests or all arrests by the agency.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

'Twas the Night Before Christmas

And so on this night before Christmas 2009, I want to pause and give a special thanks to the many public safety workers who are on-duty this evening rather than at home with their families. These professionals, officers and dispatchers alike, are tending to business as usual, answering the calls for help that invariably will come into the 911 Center and then get routed to officers in the field to handle. Let us not forget the sometimes forgotten corrections officers who are keeping a careful watch on the most dangerous members of society so we can be safe tonight.

Thank you to each of them for their solemn commitment to serve our community.

And as we celebrate the holiday season, let us not forget about the men and women of our armed forces who are on the front lines around the world, serving our country and ensuring we have the freedom to enjoy another Christmas. God bless them and their families back home, many who are once again not able to spend this holiday season with their loved ones because they answered the call to serve in lands far away.

To the families of our military personnel and public safety professionals who lost a loved one this year in the line of duty, I know of no words that are adequate to express our sympathy to you for your loss or our appreciation for the unselfish sacrifice your loved one made on behalf of us.

Let us never forget the price of freedom is costly and how some pay more than others.

Merry Christmas to all...stay safe...

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

Should the Police "Follow" You?

One of the many changes we are seeing with the emergence of social media is how virtual and actual relationships are established and maintained. These changes fit well into our community policing philosophy of partnerships with the community, in this case the social media community. We now have hundreds of followers, some from all over the country, who are interested in our media releases and informational blog postings. We are appreciative of their interest in LakelandPD.

But should we be "following" them?

For many people, the thought of the police following them (such as while driving down the road) generally produces panic, fear, and sweaty palms. And to now have the police follow you on Twitter or Facebook or via blogs, well, I wonder where should we draw the line between social interaction with the community and respect of one's personal space?

We follow a couple dozen entities on Twitter, mostly businesses or organizations in our community with whom we have a professional or personal relationship. Of course we follow numerous police agencies also to get ideas and keep up with what our peers are doing, but we do not automatically follow everyone who follows us. Some police agencies follow many more in their community under the auspices of maintaining a more open relationship with residents and businesses. The decision as to who we choose to follow is really on a case by case basis.

Now I realize that privacy is almost non-existent in the social media realm. We put stuff out there knowing others are likely going to see and read it, all with the realization that we can somewhat restrict who sees our posts, updates, and profiles on Twitter and Facebook.

So I ask this question to get a deeper understanding from our social media community - how would you react if you got notice that LakelandPD wanted to follow you on Twitter?

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

Lakelanders Helping Fellow Lakelanders

While I was driving around Lake Hollingsworth at lunch time today, two women were walking around the west side of the lake when one of them twisted her ankle and fell to the ground. Witnessing her fall and not get up, I turned my police car around and drove back to see if I could render any aid or assistance.

In the time it took me to turn around, and I'm talking moments - not minutes, three other cars and two walkers were stopping to see if they could help the woman who fell. I thought that was pretty impressive and really illustrates what makes Lakeland such a great community - people care for each other here in our town.

The woman is fine and will be okay once her twisted ankle stops swelling and begins to heal. In the mean time, I want to take a moment and thank the citizens who stopped to render aid. I didn't have a chance to get their names, but they deserve a pat on the back for being so quick to help someone in need when it would have been just as easy to drive by and not stop.

Well done folks!

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

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

School Starts Next Monday

In case you drove past the Lakeland Police station yesterday or today and wondered why there were so many police cars from other Polk County law enforcement agencies in our parking lot, the answer is related to the title of this post - we are getting ready for school to start next Monday.

The LakelandPD School Resource Unit hosts a two-day in-service training session for the School Resource Officers (SROs) from around the county every year just before school starts. The training agenda includes things like legal updates, reviews of changes to school board policy, current information on gangs and other problems the officers are likely to see in their schools this year, and plenty of time for networking with other SROs.

Schools are holding their orientation sessions today/tonight across the county in preparation for opening day on Monday. Our SROs are ready to work with faculty, staff, parents, and students to ensure a safe school year for everyone.

Now go enjoy the last weekend (safely, of course) before it's time to hit the books once again.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

The Process of Moderating Comments

One of the quickest ways to generate comments to a blog is to post something related to a topic that has controversy attached to it, say for example red light cameras. With the receipt of those comments comes a responsibility for us to moderate them before they are published. So what gets published and what gets ignored?

Comments that are critical of something I say here or the basic message being delivered will be accepted as long as they are not obscene, profane, slanderous, threatening, or generally offensive to the community's morals and values. That is a broad range of no-nos, but it can be summed up by saying anything that is respectful to different opinions or perspectives of others will most often be accepted and published. Comments that advertise a commercial business will also be ignored.

Anything else that argues against a point being made in a post will get accepted and published, regardless of the degree of inaccuracy or erroneous content in the comment. Our role is not to correct point by point or counter-argue predictions of what will come in the future. I don't mind entering some spirited debate on issues, but my other duties preclude me from being a fact-checker for the content of every comment we receive. Readers need to understand this when digesting the comments of someone and not assume everything contained in comments is accurate or factual.

So please keep the comments coming our way. We will continue to moderate them and willingly publish those that my be contrary to our position on a topic but yet are beneficial to the public discussion we hope to generate here.

Thanks to everyone who takes the time to read our blog and offer commentary along the way.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

Crime - A Small Part of Our Workload

One of the blogs we follow everyday is The Chief's Corner from Chief Tom Casady at the Lincoln (NE) Police Department. Chief Casady is a really sharp individual with a keen interest in crime analysis, crime data, and community policing.

In a recent blog posting, he noted how crime in his community accounted for approximately 8.9% of Lincoln PD's overall workload. Does that seem unusual to you?

In reality, that percentage is right on target for many police agencies. Our numbers in Lakeland indicated UCR Part I Crime (homicide, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and vehicle theft) accounted for a little over 6% of our total workload last year.

You may wonder how that can be?

The vast array of calls for service we get on a daily basis only include reports of Part I crime a small portion of the time. Traffic crash calls, disturbances, various police services like checking on someone's welfare or false alarm calls, directed patrols, and traffic enforcement comprise a big part of our total workload. While it's true that preventing crime and investigating reported crime is our primary mission, there is so much more to what we do everyday.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere

Incredible Criminal Excuses

Over on our Twitter side yesterday I retweeted a tweet from Boynton Beach Police Department regarding a news article about a criminal with an outrageous excuse for why he possessed some cocaine powder - he claimed it was flour for his pork chops.

That got me thinking about some of the most incredible excuses I have encountered during my career so far. Two stand out as the best I've heard.

During my time as a vice and narcotics detective many years ago, we would occasionally conduct surveillance in the Munn Park area for lewd activity. This was years before downtown was redeveloped to the wonderful area it is today. One night we observed two subjects engaged in open lewd conduct in the park and moved in to make arrests. Upon getting the subjects separated and up from the ground to handcuff them, one of them commented "Officer, I just want you to know I had nothing to do with this."

Really? Then please tell me who is responsible for what you were just doing on your knees in public view if you had nothing to do with it. He went to jail that night.

The second favorite event was also during my time in vice and narcotics. We were executing a drug search warrant at a residence when a subject came up to the house to buy drugs. We identified ourselves as police officers and upon searching the subject located a small piece of crack cocaine in his pants pocket. The subject uttered, "Officer, these aren't my pants."

Really? I completely understand. I often make the mistake of putting on someone else's clothes in the morning, too. It all makes perfect sense now that you explained the pants thing to me.

That guy went to jail that night, too.

- Asst Chief Bill LePere