NCJ Number
229586
Journal
Law and Order Volume: 57 Issue: 11 Dated: November 2009 Pages: 32-36
Date Published
November 2009
Length
5 pages
Annotation
This article discusses how social networks have become the new communication tools for law enforcement.
Abstract
Social networks such as Facebook, twitter, blogs, and Google Voice are the newcomers to online communities. These networks allow American police officers today to be more connected and have access to more information than any other time in history. Twitter (www.twitter.com) uses Short Messaging System (SMS) or "texting" technology to keep people in touch with one another. For less immediate needs, another free system is Facebook (www.facebook.com, which is useful for reminding your service population that officers do more than write tickets. If someone with the law enforcement agency is a decent writer and enjoys doing writing then creating and maintaining a blog is a great way to elevate the agency's community profile and control the message at the same time. A hybrid between voicemail and e-mail is Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) which runs telephone communications over the Internet, bypassing conventional telephone service. Also, Google Voice (GV) has a transaction feature that converts the spoken voicemail message to text. The core of community policing is getting citizens involved and partnering with them to solve problems. Communication is the first step. These mostly free tools help law enforcement communicate more fully and with less effort.