Social Media Podcast Beat Intro Voiceover 00:00 This is the Beat—a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest community policing topics facing our nation. Interview Debra Cohen McCullough 00:08 This is Debra Cohen McCullough with the U.S. Department of Justice, COPS Office. With us today is Lauri Stevens, founder and principal consultant with LAwS Communications. We have a few questions for Lauri today about the use of social media by law enforcement. Lauri, to start us off, can you tell us a little bit about LAwS Communications and the types of resources law enforcement can find through LAwS Communications? Lauri Stevens 00:38 Sure Debra. First of all, thanks for having me. At LAwS Communications, we focus primarily on communications strategy and we do that exclusively for law enforcement. So for example, prior to the onset of social media—law enforcement didn’t really have opportunities to distribute their messages, at least not like they do today. So our focus at LAwS Comm is primarily digital strategy and helping them understand how to best do that with a proactive strategy. I think probably our biggest area is training. We do a lot of training in the fundamentals of social media. The other big focus for us is the SMILE Conference. SMILE is Social Media, the Internet, and Law Enforcement. I also have the Connected Cops blog, which is over 3 years old now. It’s got hundreds of articles on it written mostly by law enforcement professionals from all over the world on social media and other interactive technology for police. Deb 01:36 Why is it important for law enforcement to be knowledgeable and good stewards of interactive and social media? Lauri 01:44 I think in order to answer that question properly, I have to first say that we need to be aware of what’s happening in the big picture, overall. We get caught up, I think, in our day-to-day activities. I think some law enforcement executives view social media as a check box. You just slap up a Facebook page and you call it done—there, we’re doing social media. In reality, it’s about so much more than that. In fact, we’re living inside of a communications revolution. This revolution is about openness. It affects every single organization on the planet. It’s not just for business, but it’s for government and it’s certainly for law enforcement. It’s important to become good stewards, as you say, because not to do so is to ignore that fact. This is a fundamental shift in the way things work. The agencies that think there’s a choice anymore as to whether they participate and use social media will soon be left in the dark and that’s happening really, really fast. I think that as humans, we fear what we don’t understand. I think many, maybe nearly all, police executives and managers still don’t really understand how profound this change is. I can count, probably on one hand—maybe plus a couple of extra fingers—the number of police chiefs in the U.S. and Canada who really think they get this. Some understand it in a limited way and have embraced it in their agencies, but many of them still don’t get the depth that we’re talking about. Deb 03:12 As more and more people build online communities, how are agencies using social media to advance community policing? Lauri 03:23 All in all, I think the agencies that are doing a good job are using social media to engage with citizens, to actually hear what they’re saying and to respond to them. They’re using social media to reach demographics that, until now, were difficult or impossible to reach. That is the core of the community policing, right? When I think of specific examples, I think of one officer who checks in on his city’s subway system on Foursquare to let people on the subway know he’s there and where to find him. There’s many agencies who are very effectively using social to distribute mug shots in order to source identities of murder victims or whereabouts of suspects. There’s also an agency in Australia who has replicated its neighborhood watch program with over 100 Facebook pages to make it easier to allow citizens to, in their words, be the eyes and ears of public safety. These kinds of things are just brilliant. Just this morning I heard a little bit about an NYPD officer using social to find runaway kids. The examples of really good use of social media are really endless. I think what’s important to realize is that every one of these cases, the agencies are achieving major results and effectiveness beyond what could possibly have happened without social media. And when this happens, that’s the sweet spot; that’s where the magic happens. This is where efficiencies start to be realized. We all know how important it is for the police to continue to do more and more while being given fewer resources. Deb 04:55 So let’s take that a bit further. In talking about the foundations of online community policing, how else is social media being used in investigations and problem solving? Lauri 05:09 Well Debra, I’m not a law enforcement professional. I’m not trained in policing, I’m a media person. So, I don’t pretend to know all there is to know about investigations. I think some of that is really obvious to law officers. They understand the investigative side of social media sooner and more in-depth than even the community outreach side. But, from my perspective, those two sides aren’t really separate any more. It boils down to crowdsourcing. Obviously, with investigations, there are major exceptions depending on the circumstances. Certainly, anything that needs to be covert is as covert in social media as in any other case. But when an investigation isn’t covert or doesn’t need to focus on certain individuals, the ability to source potentially tens of thousands of potential witnesses all at once is very powerful, whether that be to solve crimes or to solve problems. When I was thinking about this question, I went to your own website to look at the definition of community policing, just as a reminder. Of course the third pillar being problem solving. And you mention on your website, Scanning, Analysis, Response, Assessment. That is precisely what social media does and what it’s so effective at. Deb 06:25 Lauri, if a police chief asked you to provide a bulleted list of the top ten most important aspects of using social media in a law enforcement context, what ten things would you put on that list? Lauri 06:40 Well, in fact, police chiefs ask me that all the time. [Laughter] I’m reminded that there’s a recent study out by a company called Accenture and they found that 88 percent of citizens want to help their police department solve crime and they want to hear more from their police department. And you think about that and police don’t talk to those 88 percent, they talk about the people who are causing them problems. Until social media came around, it was difficult for police departments to reach that 88 percent without having to rely on traditional media. I think that’s the biggest thing is to get to those people. I’ve also seen agencies achieve huge successes in things like recruiting, both in getting more and better quality candidates, but also with the ability to recruit among certain demographics; maybe some minority groups that don’t necessarily gravitate towards police work. And then I would say, “Chief, I know you don’t have a lot of money to throw around,” because every police chief is facing that these days—cuts to their rank and cuts to their budget. Social media just increases your effectiveness, potentially. If it’s carried out with real strategy and purpose, you can really achieve huge results. Then—I don’t know if we’re on number four or number five here but I think that we’ve seen, time and time again, in large cases, small cases, anything at all that police are dealing with, if they’re not on social media, someone else will do it for you. That’s almost never a good thing. In my training, I talk to people about controlling the virtual scene. Any time something is happening in real life, whether they’re dealing with a shooting or a protest or anything like that, there’s a virtual scene. There’s a conversation going on and if they’re going to ignore that, it’s to their own peril because that virtual scene is always affecting the real-life situation. It’s both a challenge because they need to get in there and try to influence that, if not control it—control is not always a bad word—but it’s also an opportunity to achieve some more positive results by getting in there and trying to be part of that virtual conversation. I think also social media is just…we’ve seen so many agencies have huge success with dissolving that media filter. Police agencies always get frustrated over the lack of coverage of their events or coverage that they don’t think is fair and balanced. Now they have the opportunity to be their own newsroom, essentially. Many agencies are doing that with various degrees of results, but it’s mostly all positive—even reaching the hard-to-reach. Not everybody likes cops. Those are the people, whether they don’t like you, they don’t speak English, or for whatever other reason they’re difficult to reach, social media now offers you an opportunity to reach them. You can cast a really big net with social media and you can get in everybody all at once or you can get right down to the specific demographic you want to reach if you do it right. You can look at it that way. Again, it all goes back to strategy but you can get those hard-to-reach people. Even improving internal communications. A lot of times, we forget to talk to our own internal folks. Social media is a great way to keep communication flow really strong internally. I think, probably, finally, it’s an opportunity to build an agency’s own brand or to enhance their own reputation. Never before has there been an opportunity to try to get out there what their mission, their vision, and what they stand for. If they let that drive everything that they do in their communications plan—that eventually has to come out, that eventually is going to allow them to let citizens see them for what they stand for, what they believe in, and what they’re there for. Deb 10:31 Lauri thank you so much for your time and expertise today. If listeners are looking for more information on this topic, where can they find it? Lauri 10:42 I guess the first place I would point them to would be the ConnectedCops.net blog. As I mentioned, there’s a lot of articles on there. I’ve written some of them but most of them are written by other law enforcement professionals. That’s a really good resource. Then probably the SMILE Conference at SMILEConference.com. That’s a good place to meet like-minded individuals who are dealing with the same sorts of issues. Again, that’s a very international event as well. Deb 11:08 Thank you Lauri. Lauri 11:10 Thank you so much Debra for having me on. Beat Exit Voiceover: 11:13 The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of Justice COPS Office. The COPS Office helps to keep our nation’s communities safe by giving grants to law enforcement agencies, developing community policing publications, developing partnerships, and solving problems. Disclaimer: 11:29 The opinions contained herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or polices of the U.S. Department of Justice. References to specific agencies, companies, products, or services should not be considered an endorsement by the authors or the U.S. Department of Justice. Rather, the references are illustrations to supplement discussion of the issues. ####END OF TRANSCRIPT####