The economic crisis seems far from over and every year more cuts are made. An example of these cuts in the Netherlands are within the National Police Department. According to Magda Berndsen, a member of the Dutch parliament, we are speaking about 600 million dollar. These cuts raised concerns about the safety in the Netherlands, because substantial work could not be done. Meanwhile the Dutch police force is very busy with maintaining their image on social media, which takes a lot of time and money. Focusing on your social media image seems irrelevant with all these cuts, but are these investments somehow useful concerning our safety?
According to 80% of the police departments social media has helped them in solving crimes. So the investments in social media seem to be successful. Nowadays there are many social media platforms and ways to present yourself or your company on platforms. However, are all attempts successful? Besides, what are the boundaries?
One attempt that actually was successful comes from England’s West Midlands Police. Only 12 minutes after a Facebook post from the police department, a missing man was located and returned to the police station. This quick response would not be possible without social media. However, not every attempt is successful. An example from an unsuccessful attempt comes from the New York Police Department. Around April 2014 the police department posted this tweet
The aim of this post was to encourage people to share ‘cozy’ pictures with the members of the New York Police Department. Unfortunately this did not work out the way they had in mind. The hashtag #MyNYPD did became a trending topic, but with slightly different pictures.
As you could imagine this was not good promotion for the police department. Even if their tweet would have the effect they had in mind, it still would not contribute to solving crimes or other objectives from the police department. What is your opinion about the use of social media by police departments? Do you think they should limit their posts to posts that are relevant for pursuing their objectives, especially with this financial circumstances? Secondly, do you think this could prevent these situations of bad promotion?http://www.ad.nl/ad/nl/1012/Nederland/article/detail/4134027/2015/09/02/Politie-erg-druk-met-eigen-imago-op-sociale-media.dhtml
http://www.newsmax.com/FastFeatures/police-social-media-successes/2015/06/22/id/651729/
