Toronto coppers go social
Posted on July 27th, 2011 –
The Toronto Police Service launched their social media initiative this afternoon with a live presentation from Deputy Chief Peter Sloly.
In a nutshell, they’ve put / will put a few services online that were traditional in-person — background checks and such — but mostly the announcement was about the TPS’ now-official use of social media like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
Chief Bill Blair was a bit more detailed:
Despite having more people on the force with Twitter accounts that you can follow, the police are still saying that you have to call 911 for emergencies or get a hold of a specific division if you have less serious stuff to talk about, but this will allow you to follow what cops are doing on the streets as well as giving you a more direct channel for general questions. I’ve chatted with a few of them via Twitter over the past year and they definitely are approachable (and they respond!), so that could work out real well in the community relations department.
The only concern I’d toss out there is in seeing these new channels become saturated and eventually becoming stagnant as responding to everything becomes impossible (you can see this with very popular Twitter accounts). Guess only time will show how prepared the TPS is for this possibility.
... with pictures
... with sounds
... with videos
... with opinions
... that's shorter
... that's longer
What's on your mind?