The PR Studio

Social media and law enforcement is a favorite PR topic of mine. I resist the urge to pontificate, but the next time you have insomnia I have a cure. The advent of social media has revolutionized mass communication creating a profound effect on news and information gathering and how we engage one another. In my opinion, it is second only to the innovation by Mr. Alexander Graham Bell.

Although social media has had an enormous impact on how many organizations and individuals including news agencies, celebrities, airlines, politicians and retail outlets (to name but a few) reach their target audiences, I believe law enforcement has benefited from its existence in one of the more truly significant and meaningful ways. It is particularly remarkable when you think about just how far some law enforcement agencies have had to travel in a short period of time to embrace this medium and modus operandi. What I mean by that is if you consider a news agency, learning how to effectively exercise social media was not a total stretch but merely an extension of their daily function maybe with the exception of the logistical need to respond to a higher volume of engaged twitter followers, Facebook fans etc. However, back when blogging and twitter were terms that were still new to modern vernacular, many police departments across the country were still holding on tight to a ” nothing to see here folks” mentality when it came to communicating with the masses and by masses I mean mostly media outlets. Law enforcement in the US has come an extraordinarily long way in the last 8 years or so in this area. For law enforcement, utilizing social media has gone from a novel enhancement to simply a necessity. It is now a non-negotiable function and every police department must maintain an active and effective presence whether it is an organization of 20 officers or 3,020 officers.

A recent article from Contently Magazine captures the most early philosophy and thought process discussed at the original table set when the topic of law enforcement embracing social media was for many just a concept and for all a goal to achieve. That early philosophy was simple and it was this: Could a police agency function as the primary public safety news outlet for a community by establishing strong internal protocols and procedures to become consistently adept at high-quality content generation including frequent ‘news you can use’ alerts, department-related information and online community engagement to take advantage of the then newly available and FREE technology?

The below article expounds upon this subject. It centers mainly on the efforts of the Milwaukee PD who are an interesting case study on this topic for a variety of compelling reasons. For the record, my good friend – Anne Schwartz – who is the former, long- time civilian PIO for the Milwaukee PD
( and also the reporter who broke the Jeffrey Dahmer story!) was one of the country’s early innovators taking a lead role to teach and often times convince other law enforcement agencies that embracing these new mediums was the way to go. Those early efforts have had far-reaching influence and are now fondly remembered as… Once Upon A Time…

Here is the article. Check it out: http://blog.newscred.com/article/1097cf89a364c193d39df837a273e837/milwaukee-police-and-the-new-face-of-law-enforcement-media