Social Media: Toronto October 2013 Voiceover: Beat Intro 00:00 This is the Beat—a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest community policing topics facing our nation. Debra Cohen-McCullough 00:08 Hello. This is Debra R. Cohen-McCullough with the U.S. Department of Justice, COPS Office. With us today are Constable Scott Mills of the Toronto Police Service and Information and Issues Management Section Head in Corporate Communications, Meaghan Gray. Welcome! Meaghan Gray 00:29 Hi, Debra. Debra 00:31 Hi, Meaghan. We have a few questions for the both of you on how you’re using social media to support crime prevention and assisting crisis events. Meaghan, how does the Toronto Police Service use social media to support its goal of preventing crime? Meaghan 00:49 We use social media in a number of different ways to prevent crime in the city of Toronto. We have 273 users across the Toronto Police Service with social media accounts, and we’ve geared those social media accounts towards roles and responsibilities within the service that primarily focus on crime prevention efforts, school resource officers, traffic safety, neighborhood officers, community response officers—the types of roles and responsibilities that have the most interaction with the public as far as sharing information and engaging with the community. For instance, some of our crime prevention officers are on social media and use social media to put out information about different crime prevention initiatives that we have running at the Toronto Police Service or to provide crime safety tips to members of the public if there’s a particular crime that’s happening within their division or neighborhood. Also we have crime prevention officers that are using social media as a type of “wanted” communication. For instance, we have Wanted Wednesdays in 55 Division, Catch 22 is their version in 22 Division, and Wanted Ones in 11 Division, where the officers there have identified individuals that are wanted within that particular neighborhood, and they push that information out in social media and have been quite successful in capturing those individuals. Debra 02:21 Could you talk a little bit about how the Toronto Police Service has used social media to connect the public with Crime Stoppers? Scott Mills 02:31 Hi, Deb. In relation to Crime Stoppers and using social media to connect the public with it, we make the clear differentiation that the Crime Stoppers program is a community-operated program in partnership with the police and the media and now social media. It’s actually where we started using social media here in Toronto—was through the Crime Stoppers program. We ended up tripling our tips in a two-year period, with a quarter of the staff actually engaging the program with our community, from what we had before. Essentially, it became a force multiplier and really got the information out there. We’re always putting information out as to how you can anonymously submit information to Crime Stoppers on our social media accounts. We’ve very rarely had any occasions where people were leaving anonymous information in social media. We’re giving them a way to call on the phone or to text message a tip or to go online and leave a tip. We have a Facebook “Leave a Tip” tab, and in Toronto we also have an app. We just give that information in a timely way when we have an incident, and we also put out that Crime Stoppers is a great way to leave an anonymous tip that prevents something from happening in the first place. We’re very proactive out there with our Crime Stoppers social media accounts. We’re present on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Google+ here in Toronto. Debra 04:09 How is social media being used in your traffic unit? Meaghan 04:13 Our traffic unit was one of our first units throughout the service to really embrace social media and the ability that they had to communicate various traffic issues to the public through social media. That process has expanded to include many of our traffic officers in each of our individual divisions. These officers are able to connect directly with the public on traffic issues in and around their communities. Many of our media partners here in Toronto have picked up on that information available as well and redistribute it for us in order to share that information with the public. We have a number of ways that they’re able to use social media to communicate with the public when we have a particular collision and we want people to avoid the area. Many traffic officers will send out messages directly from a scene when they’re there, not just to the media but to the public as well. Debra 05:14 Now, your agency also conducts training on using social media to prevent crime. What type of training do you provide? Meaghan 05:24 The officers of the Toronto Police Service that are interested in using social media for communications undertake a two-day training course available through our college. We instruct our officers on the ability to use social media as part of their ongoing communications and community outreach efforts. We train them on the logistics of actually using Facebook and Twitter as the two primary social media tools that we use here at the Service. We also teach them about professional standards and professional communications and professionalism in media as well – are all components of those courses. We also include a number of hands-on practical exercises so that the officers become familiar with ways that they can use social media to maximize their crime prevention initiatives or their community engagement initiatives as well. Debra 06:20 Could you tell us a little bit about the ways you use social media during a crisis? What are your thoughts on how law enforcement in general should be using social media during a crisis event? Meaghan 06:35 I think that social media most definitely needs to be part of your communications strategy, particularly when you’re looking at a crisis communications strategy. Whether it be a crisis or an emergency or even a topic of significant public interest, I think as communicators we must include social media as part of our response and part of the way we take in and push out messaging in that regard. Here at the Toronto Police Service, we’ve tried to include social media as part of that communications strategy in responding to a crisis. We try and put out messages on social media to indicate that we’re aware of the emergency or the call, that we’re responding, that we will provide regular updates. We often try and create hashtags to coordinate a conversation on Twitter, in particular, when we’re responding to a situation of significant public interest. We try and engage all of our partners as well. I think that that’s a key consideration for law enforcement agencies when they’re using social media to respond during a crisis or an emergency—is to include your stakeholders in that messaging. Often here we’ll reach out to our public transit partners, our school board partners, or our other emergency service partners so that they’re aware of the effort we’re putting into our social media response so that they can coordinate their communications response as well. Debra 08:05 Is there anything that law enforcement should avoid doing through social media during a crisis? Scott 08:12 You really need to have a plan. It needs to be a plan that you form on a day that’s not a crisis. You need to have good back-end communication with the decision makers. You need to avoid everybody putting a message out that’s different. There needs to be really good coordination on the back end. We’ve managed to accomplish that here by having key people in key roles that are on a back-end BBM discussion group where we can actually discuss what’s happening. It’s really key to listen to what’s happening and then verify the information that you’re going to put out with an official source, from an official source account, before you post it. A really good rule of thumb is to listen in social media as to what’s happening and to be able to do that quickly, timely, and effectively. Verify the information that you’re going to put out twice, and then post it once. It’s much more effective if you can gather all your facts on the back end with your team and pause a little bit. It might seem like a pregnant pause in social media, but if you can pause and gather the facts and give out timely, relevant, and accurate information, it really helps to get the official word out—especially in crisis, like anything to do with some type of a school or where there’s a large event happening at a large center and it involves a great number of people. A really timely, accurate, and concise message to what you need those people to do is great. Within 30 seconds of you putting it out on Twitter when you’ve got your traditional media engaged, you’ll be able to get great results. If everybody’s putting out a different message from a different perspective, then the message gets easily confused. The only thing to look out for is to make sure you’ve got a clear plan in advance and you know who’s making the decisions and have the access to get those decisions into social media as quickly and effectively as possible. Debra 10:28 Well, before we close, do you have any other advice that you would give to other agencies who are interested in using social media as a tool to prevent crime and assist in a crisis event? Scott 10:42 The only advice is not to be scared of social media. It’s different. Whereas before everything kind of pinched up through one person at the top of the organization, the paradigm is definitely changed. It’s more of a grass-roots, bottom-up talking with purpose and process. The only advice I would give is to stop and establish that purpose and establish that process. Go through your organization from top to bottom, and see who can effectively get that out and have a really good back-end communication system. Once that’s in place—sometimes it’s easier said than done—but once that’s in place, using social media makes your job as a crisis communicator and a crime prevention communicator very, very easy. It does take some training. I really, strongly suggest to invest in training and consult with people who know how to do this and have been through it before on a number of occasions. It’s well worth the investment. During a crisis, your stress level will be so much lower, and the timely and effective information that’s going out to your community is going to be that much better for it. A perfect example of people that were doing it great was the Boston Police during the Boston Marathon. I sat there and watched that as a social media officer myself, and I was just in awe with the front-end communications there. Another piece of advice is if you can put your front-end communications in consultation with your investigations people on a regular basis, that is very, very helpful. A lot of things that you see out in communications for social media for a police agency inevitably needs some type of an investigation. The more quickly and effectively that you can turn information into operational intelligence for officer safety and for community safety, the more effective as an organization and as a leader you’re going to be. Debra 12:56 Thank you, Scott and Meaghan, for sharing your time and your expertise with us today. Scott 13:02 Well, thank you very much for having us, Deb. It’s very much a pleasure. I’ll just turn it over to Meaghan here. Meaghan 13:08 Thanks, Debra. That was great. Really appreciate the opportunity. Voiceover: Beat Exit 13:11 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. Voiceover: Disclaimer 13:28 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.