Social media

Additional tools to improve public relations include social media.  Police utilize social media as an informative resource when doing investigations. They use it for tips, and it has become an increasingly important part of police work.  Police are also able to use social media as a platform in order to re-humanize themselves and create a more positive public image for police. Oftentimes, the negative press ends up dehumanizing police officers generally rather than holding singular officers or police leadership and training accountable.  Fortunately, police officers themselves can interact with the community via social media, and in doing so are able to re-humanize themselves and build trust the public.  They can share information with the public on updates in cases, which has been especially critical for police involved shootings, when people are eager to hear about what’s going on.

According to a 2013 survey of police chiefs across the US, 96% of police depts. use social media, 80% have utilized it to solve crimes, and 73% have used it to improve police-community relations. Police are able to utilize social media as a very positive tool, but there are also historic examples of the damage social media has expedited in public relations with the police.  Videos of police brutality, for example, are able to circulate in a short time.  As these videos circulate and public concerns build, police leaders are expected to respond to these concerns quickly.  Because police can use social media to communicate promptly, they are expected to.  The public expects police to make statements and be transparent now more than ever before.

Body cameras

As of 2016, over 95% of large US police departments had either implemented or committed to implementing body cameras, and that number has likely grown since then. The idea behind the cameras is to provide transparency and accountability for both the officer and the citizens he or she interacts with, and many citizens and officers alike have expressed support for the cameras. However, body cameras are not without problems: tech reliability, storage capacity, what footage gets saved, where it gets saved to, how long it is stored, and how to cover the cost of the cameras and batteries are all decisions that will require input from both the city administration and the police department. Managers should therefore look to the successes and failures of similar municipalities with body cameras and learn from them in order to maximize the chances of success in their own locality. Furthermore, having officer buy-in to the cameras is crucial, as some departments have viewed body cameras as a clear sign of a lack of trust and therefore have reported compliance rates of as low as 30%. Again, having the police department and potentially the union involved in the implementation and management of body cameras could help keep all parties reasonably happy and, at the very least, on the same page. As is the case for most actions involving the police department, a good working relationship and open communication between the local government manager and the police chief will go a long way towards making everyone’s lives a little easier.