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The Social Police: Facebook, Twitter Play Role in Modern Policing

Many departments are growing their social media presence to engage with the community and improve their image.

(TNS) -- A photo of Virginia Beach police mounted patrol officers got more than 250 likes on the department's Facebook page this month. A video of Portsmouth police officers volunteering at a summer day camp was viewed more than 1,000 times. So was a video of a Norfolk officer doing Zumba at a civic league event.

Like other law enforcement agencies around the country, police in Hampton Roads are now using social media to interact and communicate with the public.

For years, detectives have kept an eye on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter to investigate crimes and make arrests.

But those sites also offer a way for police to market their departments by posting and tweeting stories about positive interactions with residents.

At a time when officers nationwide are under increased scrutiny, some say it has become important for police departments to show all sides of the work they do.

"Every chief knows that they're under the gun, so to speak, and they're very concerned about their image," said Joel Rubin, president of Rubin Communications Group in Virginia Beach. "Officers walk into a neighborhood and it's a dangerous job, and they need the public to know what their role is."

Because social media is a primary way many people receive information, departments can't ignore it, Rubin said. "It's fine to talk about the good things, but it's also important to talk about the challenging things."

To Virginia Beach police spokeswoman Tonya Borman, social media lets the public see police as real people.

"It allows people in our community to see that if I take my uniform off and I'm at the Tides game, I'm no different than anybody else there," she said. "We're all human. We all have our strengths and our weaknesses."

Borman's department has more than 10,000 followers on Facebook and 5,000 on Twitter. By comparison, Norfolk's department has a little more than 6,000 Facebook followers and nearly 2,000 on Twitter. The Portsmouth police department's Facebook account has more than 4,000 followers, while the Twitter account has more than 1,700.

As is the rule with social media, getting messages out is even easier when followers like and share photos, videos and other items.

Clicking and sharing makes "you feel like you've contributed to helping someone who is lost or maybe kidnapped," said Dana Schrad, executive director of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police.

The association has offered social media training to police departments, and there has been a bit of a "learning curve," Schrad said, but platforms such as Twitter help get information out quickly with little effort.

From Portsmouth Detective Misty Holley's standpoint, social media helps counteract residents' perception that crime is the only thing happening around them.

"We don't just want citizens to just see the crimes that happen; we want them to see the positive, too," Holley said. "Then they're not always dwelling on the negativity of crime that's happening in their community."

Social media responsibilities for most departments have fallen to public information officers, who have some interaction with the public but have been used to spending most of their time talking with reporters or gathering information disseminated in news releases. Now they use social media to communicate with everyone.

Most also didn't have any marketing training before taking to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms.

"What does the public want to see and want to hear?" Borman said. "You've kind of taken yourself out of the police world. At first, it seemed hard. It's no longer just the facts. There's more to it."

Borman has posted items about officers stopping by a child's lemonade stand and helping an animal in distress to illustrate the point.

Ronnie Dunn, an assistant professor of urban studies at Cleveland State University, said departments should be careful not to rely too much on social media for interaction with the public or treat it as a substitute for talking one on one.

"It's a good supplement to the community policing and outreach efforts, but it should never be a primary means of engaging the community," Dunn said. "It should be a tool that you add on to an already robust outreach initiative."

At first, some police agencies, worried about "opening a portal for the public to post derogatory or erroneous information," were slow to adopt social media as a way to communicate directly to the public, Schrad said.

Others were concerned that their messages could backfire. But worries have subsided with training and as officials learn that "the good far outweighs the bad," she said.

Some of that good includes recruiting.

After the police-involved shooting and subsequent riots in Ferguson, Mo., departments have had trouble getting qualified people to apply for jobs, Schrad said. The perception is officers aren't respected by the public, she said. Social media sites help give a snapshot of what it's like to work for a department.

Newport News police spokesman Lou Thurston said he was against using social media at first, because it seemed like a never-ending task for a team of three people who already were busy producing news releases, Crime Line items, videos and other information.

He changed his mind after a presentation at a conference by a Boston police spokesperson who showed how quickly police could get information out to the media and how easy it is to share positive actions by officers. The Newport News department has hired a person to handle social media and other duties.

To Thurston, a retired Virginia Beach police officer and spokesman who also worked in the media, social media offers a way for police to tell positive stories that media outlets don't cover.

"It gets the good stuff out that doesn't make the news for whatever reason," he said.

The public is responding, Thurston said. Along with the compliments, there have been complaints that have been forwarded for follow-up, he said.

That's an important part of achieving balance, said Dunn, who believes police also should disseminate information about discipline online, even if the name of the officer being disciplined isn't disclosed.

"They need to know officers are being held accountable," Dunn said.

©2015 The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, Va.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.