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February 25, 2013 By Sarah Rich
Next month police agencies around the world will connect via Twitter to participate in a 24-hour Tweet-a-thon in an effort to create awareness about police work.
The Global Police Tweet-a-thon, scheduled for March 22, starting at 8 a.m., is being led by Lauri Stevens, founder of LAwS Communications. Police agencies interested in participating should register for the event by submitting their agency name, contact information and time zone to Stevens.
She said her goal by hosting this event is to try to bring attention to police work overall and the use of social media by law enforcement.
"We hope it opens their minds to the possibilities with social media,” Stevens said in an email. “But I think the bigger goal is the message we hope to send to non-law enforcement that their police officers are up to speed with social media, and that they should use social media to talk with police officers and to be stewards of public safety.”
So far, nearly 80 agencies have agreed to participate, including the Mesa County, Colo., Sheriff's Office. As the event date approaches, registered participants will continue to be logged on the event’s global map.
“The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office hopes to share a small piece of western Colorado with the world and highlight the positive aspects of law enforcement,” said Heather Benjamin, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Department, in a statement. “In addition, we look forward to partnering with law enforcement globally through social media. Exciting times!”
On the day of the event, all agencies participating will tweet using the same hashtag – yet to be determined. Stevens said all times are local to each time zone.
“It’s about bridging gaps between communities and re-enforcing the tenets of community policing,” Stevens said.
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Interesting concept. What about Twitters TOS? Sounds like a lot of spam and potential for some people to unfollow. I enjoy a few police tweets but not every minute!
Jon, Good point. However, many agencies have held tweet-a-thons and in only one case that I'm aware of did it backfire. That was a situation where they didn't let their followers know ahead of time what they're doing. People are only going to receive the tweets from the agencies they're following. Most are following their own agency(s). If they're following more than one or follow our hashtag, we assume they're interested in the content. I guess we'll find out! :)