Police use social media to communicate with wide audience

Law enforcement agencies use social media to communicate with wide audience

Some people use social media sites to reconnect with old friends.

Others use them to talk politics, tend imaginary farms, monitor breaking news stories or swap fad-diet recipes.

For police in Southeast Missouri, social networking is a way to catch criminals, track down missing persons and share safety tips with the public.

"Facebook's a very efficient tool for us to get information out quickly," said Capt. Rodney Barnes of the Jackson Police Department, which posts information regularly on Facebook and Twitter.

Barnes, Cpl. Darin Hickey of the Cape Girardeau Police Department, Scott County Sheriff Rick Walter and Perry County Sheriff Gary Schaaf all said social-networking sites have helped generate leads in cases their departments were investigating.

"We've got some people that have called in, and sometimes they will send a private message and give us some tips. ... It does come in handy," Walter said.

Schaaf declined to go into details about specific cases, but he said his department has received tips through Facebook.

"One of the neat things about it is you can personal-message through that ... and tell us what you know," he said.

Barnes said social media helped Jackson police solve a recent shoplifting case.

"Recently, we had placed some suspect pictures out," he said. "We got a response and were able to identify who that was."

Facebook and Twitter give people an easy, comfortable way to interact with police, Hickey said.

"We definitely have gotten some good information, some investigative leads, which is fantastic," he said. "I hope that people feel that they're taking care of their community, too."

Walter said that while Facebook is useful, he still prefers to receive some tips through more secure channels.

"I don't want Joe Citizen to be giving me some drug information over Facebook," he said. "... We won't conduct any investigation over Facebook or any kind of social media. I just don't feel comfortable that way."

Emergency alerts

Police also use social media to distribute alerts about hazardous weather, road closures or potentially dangerous suspects.

Perry County recently used Facebook and Nixle, a service that delivers public-safety information to users' cellphones or email accounts, to alert drivers to a fire that forced the temporary closure of a state highway, Schaaf said.

"We utilize everywhere we can think of to get the word out on things," he said.

Sharing the news

The popularity of social networking allows police to disseminate information quickly to large groups of people, officers said.

"We can throw it on social media and have it out there faster and more accurate and in a platform that's become almost the norm for people and how they want to get news, how they want to get information," Hickey said.

One of the Cape Girardeau Police Department's posts went viral, reaching more than 20,000 people as readers shared it with friends, Hickey said.

"That's just really neat that people are sharing that information with their friends and their loved ones," he said.

Content

Departments use varying strategies to draw followers.

The Perry County Sheriff's Department has two Facebook pages: one for regular department business, such as news releases, safety tips or emergency information, and one for the jail.

The jail page is the more popular of the two, with 4,876 "likes," or followers as of Friday, compared to the department page's 2,063.

"A lot of people want to see if they know anybody that we're looking for," Schaaf said.

While Jackson posts identical content on its Facebook and Twitter accounts, Cape Girardeau police tailor content specifically to take advantage of the features of each platform.

Hickey said Facebook is a convenient way to warn the public about scams, while Twitter is good for simpler posts with a shorter shelf life.

"We're trying to keep Twitter for some more traffic-related, more immediate kinds of information," he said.

Last year, the department did what Hickey called a "tweet-along" in which an officer live-tweeted a patrol. The virtual ride-along went over so well, the department is planning another in the not-too-distant future, he said.

In Scott County, Walter's office manager shares a mix of department news releases, photographs of found pets and articles about everything from human trafficking to high-school basketball games.

The diverse content keeps people interested and helps attract a wide audience, Walter said.

"You have a lot of different people that will look at that," he said.

Barnes said Jackson takes the opposite approach, limiting its posts to police business.

"There comes a time when you can do too much. ... You don't necessarily want to overwhelm people, but you still want to be out there," he said.

epriddy@semissourian.com

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