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Correcting Bad Information on Social Media-Craig Silvermen

June 7, 2016 by

DC Public Safety Radio

See the main site at http://media.csosa.gov

Listen to the radio show at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2015/07/social-media-during-emergencies-craig-silverman-buzzfeed/

Leonard: From the nation’s capital, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host, Leonard Sipes. Ladies and gentlemen, today’s topic: social media during emergencies. Does government have the ability to correct bad information?

I am honored today to have Craig Silverman. He is the founding editor of Buzzfeed Canada. He is at Twitter, @Craigsilverman. To say that this is an extraordinarily important topic is an understatement. Craig wrote a document; Lies, Damn Lies, and Viral Content. It was funded by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and the Knight Foundation. Throughout this radio show of great importance, and immense complexity, I want us to focus on 3 things: A. How do we address misinformation? B. What can we do about misinformation, and C. If we had a dirty bomb that went off in your area, we practiced this all the time when I was with the Maryland emergency management, what are the implications for public safety and the surrounding area? Craig, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Craig: Thank you so much for having me.

Leonard: I am honored to have you. With the world economic forum in 2014 according to your report, top trends, viral misinformation. The world economic forum is saying viral misinformation is one of the top trends in the world, correct?

Craig: Yes, that’s right. It made their list of the people that they had asked to fill out a survey. People from around the world put that in the top 10.

Leonard: That’s amazing. Misinformation regardless as to it’s an emergency or not, is standard practice in today’s media world. Is that correct?

Craig: Absolutely. When you have a world of decentralized media, where people can easily publish instantly from a smart phone, can easily start to make something gather attention and vitality through social networks, we end up getting a lot of stuff that circulates that simply isn’t true. There have always been rumors. People have always traded information that had a questionable level of voracity, or was in that early emerging stage where you don’t know if it’s true or not. What happens today is these natural human tendencies that we have to pass along information, to share information, it can really go like wildfire because we live in a network society. There’s a huge amount of misinformation that gets out there. It can very easily be seen as true by a lot of people, and once it starts fooling influential folks, such as people in the press, or people in influential positions and government or other places, then it really starts to be seen as true. It’s a big priority, I think, in newsrooms to do a better job of understanding the dynamics of rumor and misinformation, and I think for the folks that you talk to, and in the roles that you’re in, it’s also critically important.

Leonard: It’s compounded during an emergency if we have a hard time correcting bad information on Facebook and Twitter, and the other social media platforms. If it gets into newsrooms, newsrooms end up repeating it. On a day to day basis, that’s a tough nut to crack. When there’s an emergency, if I’m driving in my car, when I was with Maryland Emergency Management, equipped lights and sirens. They say there’s a problem, I have to drive to the problem where we’re setting up a media briefing center, and while driving, and it’s going to take me an hour and a half to get there under the best of circumstances, the rumor goes off that there’s a dirty bomb. I don’t have a snowball’s chance in Hades of putting out that rumor. I mean, I’m driving to the scene. During an emergency, this stuff flows fast and furious.

Craig: Absolutely, it does. Obviously my area of expertise is not in emergency management, but the first thing that comes to mind to me as you’re describing that scenario is there are certainly some physical responsibilities, in person communication, going to scenes, evaluating what’s going on. There’s that piece of it, and I would hope that people involved in this world also think about setting up social media command centers to a certain point, to monitor the information that’s coming out of that specific area where a disaster might have happened, or there are reports of a disaster. Also looking at the larger networks and monitoring key words and other things to see what people are talking about. There’s a two-fold purpose in it. This has some overlap with newsrooms. On the one hand, there were people who are just simply closer to the problem, closer to what’s going on than you are, if you’re in your car driving over, what have you. They may have access to a smart phone, they may be on Twitter, they may be on Instagram. There’s a hug amount of information that could be coming out in real time, from the critical area, or from people who have a certain level of expertise and knowledge. They may be going to social networks to put that out there.

The other side of it, aside from gathering information, you want to use these channels to push out quality information. I think that through both of those things, the monitoring of information, you should be looking at rumors and claims that are out there, and trying to triangulate the information, and compare it to the information that you have coming in from your other sources. On the other side in terms of communicating information, you want to think about, we know this rumor is circulating. We know that it’s true, we know that it’s false, or maybe we don’t know whether it’s true, what can we put out to give some context and to help in the process of people understanding and making sense of the situation. I think in the scenario you described, you’re in the car driving as fast as you can to get there, I would hope that there are colleagues who are really monitoring social media. Not only to gather additional information to provide to you as you give you’re briefings, or what have you, but also to really see if there are things that are starting to take flight that may not be true, or that you really need to look more into to see whether they’re true or not.

Leonard: Even when it’s not during an emergency, I would contend that most of us in emergency management throughout the United States, most of us within the criminal justice system throughout the United States, we do not have these special I-teams to do that analysis. The question becomes whether or not we are all sophisticated enough and do we have our own personal social media accounts, and do we have enough of them? It may be Twitter, it may be Facebook, but it could be an endless number of others that are putting out this misinformation. It would take somebody savvy, it would take somebody who already has social media accounts, and it would take an almost instantaneous network to begin to compare notes, before we could put out these fires.

Craig: Yeah. This is one of the things that it goes to a point that’s really, really important. I worked on a project with the European Journalism Center, something called the verification handbook, where it was a document oriented towards newsrooms, but also humanitarian workers, helping them verify information in real time in emergency scenarios. One of the things that became very clear is as we talked to journalists with the Australian broadcasting Corporation, she talked about their experience with wildfires in Australia. I’m sure that this probably isn’t news to you, but one of the things that became very clear from talking to her is what you do before the emergency happens dictates how well you’re going to handle it and cover it in the moment.

In these scenarios, rather than trying to figure out who on the team has got social media accounts or what have you, obviously it has to become part of the planning process. What are the channels we’re going to use? What are the ones that are most important to use in terms of getting news out in real time? I would say that Twitter is a very important one, because that’s where people tend to look for real time information.

Leonard: Yeah.

Craig: Facebook is obviously where the most amount of people are. Facebook is doing a lot of work to be seen as more real time, and more hospitable to real time, so a Facebook page is also really important. I think setting this stuff up ahead of time of, where are we going to communicate this information, who is going to own these channels, and what are we going to use these channels for? Those are really, really important things to think about much sooner than before you get the reports that a dirty bomb has gone off. Figuring out who on the team has expertise in this area, figuring out what accounts exist or need to be set up, and then how you’re going to use those. Those are just as important as all the other pieces of preparation that are going to be done, because not only is it important for, again, getting the information out, but if people know this is a trusted source, and a place where good information is coming from, then they may actually bring intelligence and information to you, and it becomes a place where people can start to contribute. It again gets that kind of two-way thing going, which is really, really important and useful.

Leonard: I think you would agree that there’s no piece of technology out there that that’s going to solve this. I’ve been also looking at magazines and different companies are offering emergency social media analysis hardware/software. I don’t think this is a matter of hardware/software. I think this is a matter of, as you said before, preparation, having trained people in place, and the ability to instantaneously sit at a computer and analyze social media and instantaneously contact each other. This is something that’s not going to involve one or two or three people, this is something that’s going to involve in some cases, up to 20 or 30 people who can instantaneously drop what they’re doing, go to the computer, start searching hash tags, start sharing information with each other. That involves a pretty high degree of sophistication and preparation and technology that they have to have with them practically at all times.

Craig: Yeah. You need an internet connection, and things like say Tweet Deck or Hoot Suite, or things like that in terms of the tools, but there is a lot of it that goes down to training and expertise. Just a lot of it that is the human factor. You need to have access and basic knowledge of the tools, but you also need to have people who are well trained. I think actually a small group of people can achieve a lot. The larger you get, once you get beyond say five people, it becomes very hard to coordinate those folks. You might have people duplicating effort in the scenario of monitoring social media and analyzing it. Ideally, you have some specialists in this area who can get on that wan watch for it. I think there’s the technology piece, but what you bring up is kind of the human piece of it, and that’s really, really important when we’re talking about rumors and misinformation.

There are some really basic human needs that are filled by rumors. That’s why we have so many of them, particularly in emergency and disaster scenarios. When humans lack a certain amount of information, when it’s a very confusing scenario, and there’s lots of conflicting information, what we try to do, is we try to make sense of the world. It makes us very uncomfortable to not have information, especially in a critical scenario. It’s very tough for our brains to process conflicting information. What we naturally try to do is to make sense of this scenario, and that often causes us as we talk with other people to come up with, “well, maybe it’s because of this, or maybe it’s because of that.” We all put our pieces of information together, and that’s where we start to create and propagate rumors. It’s important for everyone to understand that there is this human need that rumors can often fill, especially in emergency scenarios, where there’s a real, imminent threat there. Understand that rumors aren’t necessarily people who are trying to put out false information, it’s people who mean well who are engaging in this process of sense-making, trying to figure it out.

Especially when it’s hurricanes or things like that, and there’s high anxiety. It actually is a coping mechanism in a lot of ways for us to fill in the gaps, the things that we don’t have, the information we don’t have, to put that out there. You’ll see this happening on Twitter and on social media, is people asking questions, interacting with each other, latching on to little scraps of information that come out that seem to make sense to them that they then propagate. I think that everyone should have a basic understanding of why rumor is such a basic human element, particularly in these scenarios. Whenever you have things like bombings, or hurricanes, natural disasters, they’re going to be there. It’s the human engine, emotions and brains and those kinds of things that are driving these rumors. Tools and technologies are important, but understanding human behavior is always really, really big in this kind of scenario.

Leonard: There’s also sources of purposeful misinformation. One of the things when I was learning how to do green screen television, is that I realized that I could buy readily available footage from elsewhere, I can do a green screen television shoot, and it will look exactly like any other news program. It will look and feel and smell and taste like a real news program, and I can purposely put out misinformation, and sites purposefully putting out misinformation. I refer to the photos of sharks swimming in the streets of Sandy Hook after Hurricane Sandy. We have that level of a complexity to deal with as well.

Craig: Yes, absolutely. One of the things in the research that I focused on were what I called fake news websites. These are websites where somebody’s taken a basic WordPress template or web template and it looks like a real news website. The articles are written with a newsy voice and tone to them, but everything on the website is fake. What I saw in my research was that they could have articles that could get hundreds of thousands of shares, driving a significant amount of traffic. What their strategy basically is, they’re trying to monetize on gullibility. They come up with fake articles about celebrities, or about what I saw when Ebola was a real threat in the United States, they did a lot of fake articles. One of them reported that an entire Texas town had been quarrantined because a family had contracted Ebola. Completely fake, of course. It got a huge amount of shares. Of course, that sends people to their website, they have ads on their pages, and they earn money that way.

There are certainly people who are conscientiously trying to spread misinformation, whether it’s fake news websites doing it to earn money, or perhaps there are people who have a malicious intent and other ways. That’s certainly something that’s going to emerge and come out there. Sometimes though, people are spreading fake information, but it’s not necessarily with malicious intent. This is a really hard thing particularly for journalists to understand, because why would somebody put out something that was fake? The answer that a lot of these hoaxers give, is that again, it’s a stress relief for them to just put a joking image. Unintentionally they put it out thinking everyone will know it’s a joke and have a laugh, but people start to take it and treat it as real.

Again, there’s this release valve that people need in these very anxiety inducing scenarios where they’ll often put something out like that. It is something to be aware of. It’s important to be aware that rumors are absolutely going to emerge in these scenarios. A hundred percent guaranteed, in an emergency response scenario, natural disaster scenario, what have you, rumors will abound. No question about it. There will also be people who intentionally or otherwise put out misinformation.

One is the monitoring aspect of this. The second piece where journalists also really need to raise their skill level, is the verification piece of it. You see a tweet, and somebody’s made a claim, how do you figure out if that’s true or not? This is a skill area where the more people who can know how to use some tools and some basic approaches to figure out whether it’s true or false, the better off we’re all going to be as a society.

Leonard: There’s a fascinating part of your report where basically you’re saying that there’s an economic model for anything that delivers clicks to a website and that the incentives are all wrong, which is one of the reasons why we’re having this problem to begin with.

We’re more than halfway through an extraordinarily entertaining and informative program. Ladies and gentlemen, Craig Silverman is by our microphones. Founding editor of Buzzffed Canada. You can reach him a Twitter @craigsilverman. The report itself, Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content, again funded by the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and the Knight Foundation. Extraordinarily fascinating read. Find it on the internet if you are interested in rumor control, if you’re interested in emergency management, you must go to the website and get Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content, and read it.

Craig, we have a 30% reduction in reporters over the last 10 years. Where we’ve relied upon media in the past to assess rumors and correct information internally, their ranks have been depleted tremendously. The reporters who I work with are doing more than ever before with less than ever before. The media that we counted on in the past to verify and to figure out what is correct information and what is incorrect information with our help from people who are directly at the scene. Because of their fewer numbers, it’s very hard for them to complete this task. It’s very hard for them to be the gatekeeper.

Craig: It is. The reason I do things like the verification handbook and the Lies, Damn Lies report, is because I see that there’s a lack of these skills in the newsroom. Of the journalists that are left, they absolutely are overloaded with different things, and they haven’t been given training in verification of social media content and things like that. I think you do have to in these scenarios, look at newsrooms as an important channel and partner in these things. I also do think that you have to look at the reality that you just articulated, and say we are going to be a source as well. We’re not just going to feed things through the media. We have to be able to be a credible, reliable, consistent source ourselves. I think that’s a really important thing to realize and to think about what that’s going to take in terms of resources and training on your own.

All that being said, a piece of advice we give to newsrooms in terms of preparing for disaster coverage is you need to think about all of the critically important government agencies, first responders, experts in your area and you need to create a line of communication with them ahead of time. I think it goes both ways in that, absolutely you should be thinking about who are the newsrooms, AP being one that’s all over the country, so how do we get a direct line into AP to make sure we’re communicating with them well. Thinking about locally, who are the critical local sources as well, and setting up those lines of communication to say when we have something important, we’re going to get it to you in this form. For the journalists, to tell them and say when you have an important question, when you know something, here is how you get that to us. I think when we’re talking about these kinds of scenarios of emergency situations, some of the mutual suspicion or distrust that tends to be there, it recedes a little bit because everybody’s in it together just trying to get the best possible information out to the public as possible. To tell the people who need to evacuate that they need to evacuate, and to make sure that it’s not a false order. And so on.

I think that you’ll find in these scenarios, newsrooms do want to be a very good partner. Figuring out the method of communication, helping them understand what kind of information they can rely on from your particular office, and which other places they might need to go for other information is very important. Then of course thinking about how you are going to get your information, not just out through the media, but through like we talked about; a Twitter account, a Facebook page, other means to make sure that it’s getting out there as much as possible.

Leonard: Bottom line is that we have to have a core of digital specialists who are extremely sophisticated about social media. Extremely sophisticated in terms of following the media, who already have these accounts set up, who are ready to go at a moment’s notice. What you’re saying is, is that we can do it with a small number. Let’s just say 1-10, we have to be digital specialists. We have to really know social media. We have to know its implications, we have to know who’s out there, and we have to be on the various platforms. I agree with you with Facebook and Twitter, but Instagram is rising in popularity more than anybody ever anticipated, and others. Periscope. There’s all sorts of things out there that are just exploding and we have to be knowledgeable of them all. We in the media, and we within government, and we within emergency management must become digital media experts.

Craig: Absolutely. You have to think like a newsroom in some ways, particularly when there’s an active scenario going on. You have to think about how you’re communicating the information. One of the other pieces that’s really important and this is talked about in the report, is deciding at what point you’re ready to communicate a piece of information.

Newsrooms, what I was talking about in the sense of there’s so much information that’s circulating online and circulating on social networks, and it may have news value and it may be of interest, and it may get them clicks, but what newsrooms have to figure out is, what’s your bar for when you’ll actually cover something? Do you need to have it 100% nailed down? Or will you just take anything that’s circulating and put some [hedging 00:21:58] language in, and saying, “Well, this is popular on Reddit, we don’t know if it’s true, but have a look at this photo.” I think it’s important for government agencies and communicators as well to think about that. Okay, so if we’re going to be a source of information in this scenario, what level of voracity, what level of conformation do we need to put something out? Are we only going to put out stuff that is 100% nailed down, or are we actually going to engage and say, “There’s a rumor circulating that this is happening in this area of the city, as of right now we have no information to confirm that.”

Thinking about how you’re going to engage on that level is I think a really important thing. Overall, yeah. I think that there’s no way to do this kind of work today without having people on your team who are social media savvy, who are good at monitoring, who are good at assessing, who are good at verifying, and who are good at communicating. These are absolutely core skills. There are definitely tools and things that can help you, but a lot of it comes down to human decision making and figuring out what you’re processes are and what you’re standards are, just like newsrooms have to do.

Leonard: Even in your report, when you mentioned Larry King, he criticized CNN his own network in terms of Flight 370, the Indonesian airliner that went down. He criticized their coverage of that as absurd. We say in the report that there is an economic model, that anything that drives clicks to a website, the incentives, fiscal incentives, financial incentives are all wrong. This is a challenge. This is a challenge for media, it’s a challenge for us to put it together, and guess what you’re saying is, is that not only must we train amongst ourselves, we’ve got to get together with media and figure all this out ahead of time, and have a protocols in place so bad information doesn’t get out information that’s going to harm literally thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people.

Craig: Absolutely. Yeah. That preparation piece. We keep coming back to it because it’s so essential. For the folks that this particular conversation is targeted at, I don’t know that their incentives are as misaligned as they are in a lot of newsrooms in the sense that a lot of digital newsrooms value the number of views and clicks you get, and if you take the extra time to nail something down and find out that it’s not real, then you get no clicks for that, because you haven’t gotten the story. Other people may get it first. In newsrooms, what they have to re-calibrate is what do we value? Do we value getting the most clicks on a story, or do we value being the ones who’ve said, “No, no, no. This story is fake,” and putting that out there and showing that we’re trusted and building that up over time.

I work at BuzzFeed now. I Joined BuzzFeed after I did the fellowship that led to the report we’re talking about. For me. BuzzFeed obviously is a huge organization, drives a huge amount of traffic, covers a huge amount of stuff that’s viral. What I saw before I joined, is a shift that had been happening culturally internally at BuzzFeed over the last couple of years, whereby rather than just finding anything and being first to it and getting it up first, the culture had shifted towards asking questions, reaching out, doing verification, and not having fake stuff on the site. A more journalistic culture has taken hold, and BuzzFeed as they’ve been hiring people and news.

I don’t know exactly what the incentives are in the world of the folks who are here, but I assume that there’s probably not as much pressure around clicks, and far more to be lost in terms of reputation if a government agency or a specialized company doing emergency response is putting out fake information. That is a game changer for them, whereas a single journalist, if they make 1 mistake they can move on. For a government agency putting out false information in an emergency, that’s almost game over, because of the amount of credibility it has.

Leonard: In the final minutes of the program, and there’s so much I wanted to get to but I’m not going to be able to get to it today. The more we care about a rumor, the more we have a stake, the more we participate in that rumor, the more we care about a topic, the more like we are to spread rumors, and the more likely we are to believe it’s true. We cherry pick information that we hear, that we come into contact with, and if it fits our preconceived notion of the world, there’s a good possibility that we will spread that rumor. We will believe it and spread it. Part of this is the psychology of the people who are reading and assessing this for themselves, and what you’re warning is that you’ve got to be very careful in debunking the rumor. You cant go after the person, you have to to go after the facts. There is a strong set of psychological principles that apply.

Craig: Yes. There’s a lot going on here in terms of why somebody would choose to propagate a rumor. If it aligns with existing knowledge and existing beliefs that they have, they are more likely to believe it and to propagate it. If it fits with suspicions they have, if it fits with their worldview, again they’re more likely to put it out there. They’re more likely to believe it. Another thing that people should note also about rumors, there is often a connection between repetition and believability. The more that someone is exposed to rumor, the more that any skepticism they might have about it starts to erode.

There have been studies about the number of times somebody was exposed to a rumor they start to believe it even more.

Leonard: That’s amazing.

Craig: It is. It just shows how important it is that so many of us news organizations, government communicators and other communicators, how we understand that we have to get out there early. When we see things, we have to talk about it and engage and warn people off of this stuff.

Then that gets us into the realm of debunking that you brought up. Which is, how do you do this effectively without in effect, repeating the rumor so much that people still ignore your debunking. One, as you mentioned, is people who pushed out a false rumor, you don’t want to attack them, you don’t want to personalize it. You want to debunk the idea and not the person is what people often say. That’s very important. Don’t go around shaming people. Make it easy for them to let go of this thing that they put out there and that they believed. It’s also really important to try to minimize the amount of times you’re repeating the false information. You want to express the truth in a more positive way.

A small example of this, rather than saying Barack Obama is not a Muslim, you would want to say Barack Obama is a Christian. That’s the more positive reinforcement of the correct information. It’s also important of course to get out there early. It’s important to do it in a positive way, to not attack people. It’s important to think about how you can connect with other trusted sources to get this information out there. What I mean by that is, if somebody is propagating a rumor because it aligns with say a political belief, a personal belief, some kind of orientation. If you can get other organizations that person might be perceived to be as aligned with their beliefs, and have that organization help you with pushing out the debunking, then you’ve got a much better chance of getting it out there. If they have suspicion about the government, then you should talk to other local organizations that aren’t seen as government organizations to get them to push it out there as well, whether that’s a red cross, or a local chamber of commerce. Think about all these different channels, how people who might be skeptical of government, might actually listen to one of these other channels.

Leonard: All right. Craig, you’ve got the final word. There’s so much here to discuss. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’re interested in emergency management, if you’re interested in relations with the media, if you’re interested in rumor control, please go to Lies, Damn Lies and Viral Content, easily found on the internet. It is one of the most fascinating reads that I’ve had within my 40 years within the criminal justice system. We’ve talked to Craig Silverman today. Twitter @craigsilverman, founding editor at BuzzFeed Canada. Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety. We appreciate your comments. We even appreciate your criticisms, and we want everybody to have themselves a very pleasant day.

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Communications in Law Enforcement and the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing

April 22, 2016 by

DC Public Safety Radio

See the main site at http://media.csosa.gov

See the radio program at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2015/05/law-enforcement-and-justice-communications-presidents-task-force-on-policing/

Leonard: From the nation’s capital this is D.C. public safety. I am your host Leonard Sipes. Communications in law enforcement and the president’s task force on 21st century policing is our topic today. I want to make it clear from the very beginning that the discussion applies to all of us within the criminal justice system. To discuss the issues I’ve asked two experts on criminal justice and communication to join us today. One is Deborah Winger, she is the director of undergraduate journalism, associate professor of the Meek School of Journalism at the University of Mississippi. She is at www.advancethestory.com. We also have Ted Guest, he is the Washington Bureau Chief of the crime report, www.thecrimereport.org. To Deb, and to Ted welcome to D.C. public safety.

Ted: Thank you.

Deborah : Thank you.

Leonard: All right, the president’s task force on 21st century policing, I’ve read this several times. I’ve had one of the two co-chairs Laurie Robinson, who used to be a deputy attorney general at the U.S. of Department of Justice on the program previously. I’ll put the connection to the prior program in the show notes, in essence, I’m reading the report as dealing with communications, a fundamental pillar. They indeed did call their particular sections that they wanted to draw attention to pillars. I am going to read just a couple. Building trust and legitimacy, guardian mindset rather than a warrior mindset, culture of transparency and accountability, dealing with social media and a focus on community policing. All of these suggest to me a different way of communicating between law enforcement and the community and the criminal justice system in the community. So that’s my understanding of the president’s task force of the 21st century policing, that the big focus is on communications.

So I wanted to ask you a series of questions about that. They are talking about issues; creating a positive interaction with the police? My question is, with the focus on social media and the focus on communications do we in the criminal justice system and to those of us in law enforcement, are we really equipped to have a sophisticated conversation with the public as to policing or other aspects of the criminal justice system. Ted did you want to go first?

Ted: Yeah, I would say we don’t have such a sophisticated system. By the way, I don’t think the criminal justice system is much worse than any other government agency or any other entity in the United States, some specialize in this so I don’t want to be seen as saying the criminal justice system is the worst. One thing we should keep in mind in this conversation, the criminal justice system in this country is very diverse, it has various elements, the basic ones, the police, the courts, corrections agencies. We should keep in mind there is something like 18,000 police department in this country.

Leonard: Yes.

Ted: There is not a central authority. So when, we are going to have to make generalizations in this broadcast. We should all keep in mind, most of our listeners will know this there is no central authority telling people to do. This task force I thought had a lot of good ideas but it’s basically an advisory body of a bunch of experts but no one has the authority to implement this on a national scale, an individual police department or part of the justice system could agree or disagree with any of the recommendations, I think the recommendations are basically good. To answer your question, I don’t think on a broad scale I don’t think we are really equipped right now to implement them.

Leonard: Deborah, did you want to tackle that question?

Deborah : Yes, I want to follow up on something that Ted said about entities in general. Whether it’s a governmental agency, a law enforcement agency, a brand, a news organization, we are witnessing a major paradigm shift in the way communication happens in general. The rise of audience power, for law enforcement agency the audience is anyone you’re serving or protecting, right? Their ability to communicate with you and to engage with you if you do practice social media has never been greater. It’s really changed the dynamic of the relationship for communicator’s. We used to be able to simply broadcast to simply publish, and have very little knowledge about how we were being perceived or whether the information was understood. When you use these new technologies effectively you should be able to communicate in real time with real people. Most of us do not have the infrastructure to make that happen. Even news organizations that this is their reason for being, right, to communicate information. They are not always doing as good of job as they should at engaging and interacting with the audience.

Leonard: The processes of communicating is changing rapidly. It’s changing rapidly, for mainstream media, its changing rapidly for organizations that are trying to communicate. In the middle of all of this whirlwind of change, new technologies, new apps, new social media platforms, podcasting is going through a resurgence. How are we going to expect law enforcement agencies, Ted said it, 18,000 individual law enforcement agencies around the country. There’s certain police department, like the Washington D.C. police department, the New York police department, they do an extraordinary job of communicating with the public but most law enforcement agencies and I think most of us within the criminal justice system do not know how to communicate. When the president task force in 21st century policing comes along and since communicates a huge part of our ability to do a better job to serve the public. I’m sitting there whoops there’s a disconnect here.

Ted: It depends when we are talking about communications we are talking about a wide range of things. Some of the communications are coming from the police department or law enforcement authority to the community. Let’s say alerting people to some kind of emergency, I think on that level we are certainly doing a better job then we are used to. Of course, a lot of people in the public may not have the technology either may not own it or may not have it available and may not be hearing the message. That is just one very elemental level of communication. Let’s remember why we are having this discussion about the 21st century policing task force.

Why did this happen? It happened essential there was a big episode that most of our, all of our listeners should know about. Last summer in Ferguson, Missouri in which the shooting of an unarmed black man got a huge amount of publicity and generated a huge amount of controversy. A lot of the controversy, I think as far as communications was concerned had to do with the police departments not talking about it when it first happened. Again, that kind of thing I am not sure the 21st century policing task force really make a firm recommendation on. That’s the kind of thing that I would like to see among many other things. When should a police department, or law enforcement agency be talking about an incident that is controversial. Again there are many different kinds of communications. Not to forget the obvious, just basic communication about crime in your community.

One thing that has changed a lot in recent years, is much better communications to people there used to be a police blotter that used to be published, and still it’s published in a lot of newspapers but now we have the available via social media so just again that is a very basic thing when did the crime occur in the community just so you know that information. In this conversation we should take into account there are many different levels of communication, many different kinds of incidents we should be discussing its just not one central thing, communicating everything.

Leonard: That’s my point. My point, Deborah in all of this is that the average police commander in the average police department in this country reading the president task force on 21st century policing with its emphasize on social media, with its emphasize on communication, with its emphasize on building trust, with its emphasize on building legitimacy, he or she is sitting there going “Oh my heavens, what in the name of heavens am I supposed to do with this information, what communication platform should I engage in, what builds legitimacy, what builds trust”. I think it is very confusing to them unless someone comes out and provides some sort of firm guidance in terms of what we means in terms by communications it’s all going to go by the waist side. Some have suggested that to me. Do you have the sense Deb?

Deborah : Well one of the things to follow what Ted was saying with Ferguson is I would say that any police or law enforcement organization needs to understand a couple of things the control of information, we no longer control as much information as we had in the past. To think that we don’t say anything about the incident, that someone else is not going to say anything about the incident if anybody still believes that they should quickly disabuse themselves of that perception. I would say that any organization that is going to be involved in communication information to the public that every organization needs to have a crisis communication plan. They need to be prepared for information about an incident involving law enforcement to not go there way and to know how to respond to that and to be prepared to monitor twitter, to see what topic’s are trending relating to this issue. To be able to quickly leverage the trust that they’ve built prior to the crisis occurring to have people who are going to already be followers re-tweeting the correct information if wrong information is getting out there.

Go ahead.

Leonard: No please.

Deborah : I was just going to say all of this needs to happen on the front end before the first crisis occurs, you cannot try to tackle this when there’s an incident.

Leonard: Law enforcement is no different than the average organization. They all believe it is not going to happen to them. I am not quite sure that Ferguson the day before the incident  ever dreamed that they would be up against national and international media and be up against hundreds of thousands if not millions of social media messages. That takes organization, that takes pre planning, that takes an offal lot of preparation to handle something like that. The average police department is not going to deal with that, heck the average company is not going to deal with that. My guess is that there is a reluctance to invest that level of time and trouble and energy into something most people feel they are not going to face until it actually happens.

Deborah : I think you are correct. I think you could look at it as this incredibly time intensive, resource intensive effort. I think if that had … again we weren’t there, in the middle of it with the law enforcement officials, I think you are probably right that they never did have a discussion about how are we going to handle the communication around any type of crisis. I think that is where it has to start. You at least have to, you might throw the plan out but you have to dedicate some time to at least discussing on a very fundamental basic level. Who are we going to pull in to manage the twitter account or the Facebook account looking at the report we that we referencing today. It looked like a majority of law enforcement have either a Facebook or a twitter account. We know we can narrow it to that, but who is going to be there monitoring what is being said and responding with accurate information in a professional manner, again leveraging the trust that you hopefully have built through your efforts in social media prior to this event occurring.

Leonard: That’s my fear. Ted go ahead.

Ted: One thing, going back to my 18,000 police departments statement, we should keep in mind here some of our listeners may not know this, most of these police departments are very small. I think Ferguson actually was one of the bigger ones which may surprise people, like fifty officers. Sometimes we think of New York City which has 32,000 officers but they are way on the extreme. Many departments in this country I think as many as a third or more have ten or fewer officers. These people no matter how well meaning they are really don’t have the time and expertise to develop these kinds of policies which is one reason why possibly this policing task force is good because it will help focus people’s attention on some of these issues. Even focused people’s attention on them, you have to think of these small police departments of 10 people are they going to have this has high as high on their agenda. They probably have it higher on their agenda now then they did a couple years ago, we should keep that in mind.

Leonard: Let’s go back, I do want to refocus away a little bit from crisis communications to day to day communications. They are talking about creating a positive interaction with law enforcement, levels of trust, diversity, recruitment, a regular forum, recognizing the voices of youth, interactive distance learning, public engagement all of this signals a digital platform of communicating. Before the show I said, either an individual police officer can go to a community meeting and discuss their plans with thirty people or you can have individual police officers taught how to better interact that they encounter within the community or you can go to a digital strategy and talk to thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands at the same time. So it seems to me that clearly that a digital straggly would and a social media strategy that the report calls for would be a productive way to interact with citizens as long as citizens had a way of answering and responding the polls, so police officers or anybody in the criminal justice system can learn from the interaction. It seems to me a digital strategy is vital.

Deborah : I agree.

Ted: It certainly is. Again to go back to what I said before and I am pretty sure that Deb will agree with you have to know what the message is, what are you trying to get across. We could have all of the techniques in hand which a lot of departments do and a lot don’t. We don’t have time on this show to go into all the controversies about policing but there’s a big dispute right now going on around the country about what should police be doing about minor offensives. You know, there’s one argument is they should be very aggressive about dealing with every kind of minor offense because the person involved could end up in major offensives. Then there’s another group of people who say no we should emphasizing violent crime, serious crime, police shouldn’t be dealing with people smoking pot on the street. That kind of thing.

Well a police department has to have its own policy, I am just using that as an example, decided so it can communicate that kind of thing to the public. We assume police want to communicate more than what I described earlier as the police blotter there was a burglary  yesterday on Pennsylvania Avenue, that’s one thing to communicate but do communicate policy issues you got to have the message straight as well as the actually technique of doing it.

Leonard: Ladies and gentleman, I want to reintroduce our guest Deborah Winger. She is the director of Undergraduate journalism, associate professor of the Meek School of Journalism at the University of Mississippi. She has her own site advancethestory.com, which I find fascinating and I’ve gone to several times since I’ve done the last radio show. We have Ted Guest, he is the Washington Bureau Chief of the crime report, thecrimereport.org, to be unquestionably best daily summation of crime news throughout the country.

Let me swing it back, because if we got a discussion what police should do we would be here for the rest of the show. Ted is right, I’ve read a variety of reports, a variety of newspaper articles through Ted’s service I should say thecrimereport.org and there is massive disagreement all throughout the United States in terms of what we want to do operationally in terms of law enforcement. If we don’t have a core message, if we don’t have a core national understanding as to what it is we want to do within law enforcement what in the name of heavens are we going to be communicating to citizens.

Deborah : I think that is exactly what any agency regardless of size needs to figure out. What is the purpose of our social media account and to be realistic about the resources. I think a mistake a lot of organizations have made is to try to put all the social media control in to one person’s hands and you know you certainly understand the rational behind that is because you want a controlled message. If it’s only in one person’s hands and there on vacation you are out of luck. You know the social media works best when you have lots of people in your organization allowed to post to social media that there’s a clear understanding throughout the organization of what is the type of content that we are going to share and how are we going to interact and again that takes training, that takes time. If the end result is better policing, a safer community then it certainly seems worth it. The very beginning you have to decide what resources do we have that we can put towards this effort and what is our goal. Is our goal to reach youth? Well then we are going to have a very different strategy then if our goal is to communicate crisis.

For me part of it again having that first conversation and making sure everyone in your organization law enforcement or otherwise understands what you are trying to do with your social media account.

Leonard: That’s part of the divergence and complexity of social media, with every audience you may have different strategy. There are some people out there that use Instagram as an example to communicate with younger audiences, and a possibility of using Facebook to deal with older audiences. Yet [inaudible 00:20:38] can out with a report that basically said, “No, the young folks are still on Facebook and there hasn’t been a huge shift to Instagram”.

Deb, you may know this because we are part of the social media community and Ted is part of this discussion but how is the average chief of police in the average city going to figure this out. A new form of communicating with the larger community if it’s indeed podcast or television shows or Instagram or Facebook or Twitter, where does he or she go to for guidance to learn all this stuff, to implement it in a meaningful way in the community and figuring out what measurement tools are available so he or she can get the feedback they are looking for from the larger community. That is an unbelievable difficult task for the average law enforcement agency or anybody within the criminal justice system.

Deborah : I think I would say two things right off the top of my head. One is don’t get attracted to the shiny. Just because Meercat and Periscope are available for live streaming for Twitter doesn’t mean you have to jump on it. I mean, yes experiment with tools and somebody in your organization should be that perons who is geeked out by communication technology and it’s always experimenting. I would actually consider trying to hopefully you have a relationship with local media and leveraging their knowledge about the community and the social midday tools that are used most commonly in the community. Meeting with the webmaster or the digital producer of the local television station or someone in the newspaper and say, “How are you reaching audiences?”. I mean learn from what other people are doing versus reinventing the wheel. Especially if you don’t have the resources to send your PIO to training or you know you don’t have a staff of people in your communication office. I would say try to learn what other are already successful in these platforms what they are doing well. You know try to translate that to what you are trying to accomplish as law enforcement agency.

Leonard: Ted, can the average chief of police go to the average newspaper and television station and say “Help me engage in social media platform”.

Ted: Yeah they can certainly go, I mean I think every news media organization in this country wants to have relationships with the police departments. They might not always be pleasant and positive relations but a lot of are. We deal with police departments daily. I am talking about the news media in general. I am sure that news directors and editors would talk to that doesn’t necessary have to be the police chief but as least the department have a public information officer or as Deb said someone designated to be the social media person.

Also again we have been talking about talking to the community a lot of the bigger police departments do periodic surveys of the police department. Whether it’s an informal thing or some kind of an actual survey, not only what you think about our policy on this or that but they could include in that how do you get information, which social media do you use, is their any information you think you should be getting you are not getting. Again I realize we are talking about we are talking about a small place department is not going to be able to do what huge [inaudible 00:24:23] type survey but I think police department should be able to do that in some way. Actually as social media makes it easier when we are talking about e-mail when we are talking about doing a survey. Again not that you would necessarily be guided by everything the public said but at least it would give you a better idea about what information they are getting and what they would want.

Leonard: There are free tools out there like Survey monkey that can allow them to do that. I am going to throw out another suggestion. Partnering with colleges, partnering with the communications and journalism classes with colleges and sit down with them and say, “How do I communicate, how do I get feedback, how do I quantify that feedback, how do I make that it a meaningful exchange”. I think journalism is changing, they are just as challenged as everybody else, the journalism schools. At least they are examining this issue they would be wonderful places to assist local law enforcement agencies. Agree or disagree?

Deborah : Absolutely, I mean certainly here in beautiful Oxford, Mississippi where the University of Mississippi is located our local police department is very active on Twitter for example, and if someone came to us and said “Hey, we want a crash course in better engagement on Twitter”. I know there are several faculty that would be delighted to do something like this. I think that is an excellent idea as well.

Leonard: So I am not suggesting replacing community meetings, community meetings are essential. I go back to the idea where you can go and sit with 100 or you can go and talk with social media and talk with thousands. I am suggesting the possibly of doing both. If you are going to do it digitally it has to be not just you suggested a little while ago Deb, not just the public affairs person, the chief the deputy chief the commander at various districts need to be able to do this as well correct? They need to have this constant check in with the community, what are we doing right, what are we doing wrong, where are we messing up. That has to be across the board throughout the agency, there has to be a larger sense not I think what others have said more communication with media. Media is in the position of being in the conduit to get the word out beyond social media. Correct?

Deborah : Absolutely, and something that you said, “Not giving up on the community meeting”. Why not make the impact exponential go to the community meeting come up with a hashtag for the meeting and encourage everyone at the meeting to tweet about what they are hearing at the community meeting. Then you had the one on one interaction then you spread it to those who cannot be included to that particular meeting. Figure out how to leverage the things the things you are already doing and expand them through the use of social media and part of that is to train more than one person in the department on how to do this properly and effectively.

Leonard: Ted, we have one minute left. In terms of working with the media being more open and approachable to and more cooperative to with the media, we in the criminal justice system we have a hard time doing that. Do we not?

Deborah : You know…

Ted: I don’t know its hard to generalize that. Some agencies do it every well, other agencies don’t do it very well. A lot of agencies unfortunately perceive that the media is interested in so called bad news about your agencies and in those cases it can be pretty hard to communicate

Leonard: A question to either one of you. Can we partner with the media then? Can the criminal justice system partner with the media, in terms of communicating with the public and getting reation to the public? Is that permissiable?

Deborah : I think the media and law enforcement need each other. I think most smart folks in both areas understand that. I think the more they can do to build relationships and whether that’s you know, training for each other or simply sharing the practices the better off the community is and each of the individual entities.

Leonard: It’s a fascinating conversation with both of you. I appreciate so much both of you being before the microphones today because this is a very complexing issue, the proper communicating between law enforcement, the criminal justice and the public it is a very complex issue. So thank you very much for being at the microphones today. Ladies and gentleman we had Deborah Winger, she is director of undergraduate journalism, associate professor at the Meek School of Journalism University of Mississippi. She has her own blog, extraordinarily interesting, advancethestory.com. Ted Guest is the Washington Bureau Chief of the crime report and somebody who has been around journalism for decades. Somebody who I really trust, thecrimereport.org. Ladies and gentleman this is D.C. public safety we appreciate your comments we even appreciate your criticisms. We want everybody to have themselves a very pleasant day.

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Film and Video Artists and Offender Reentry

September 21, 2012 by

Http://media.csosa.gov

Radio program at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2012/07/film-video-artists-and-offender-reentry/

Len Sipes:  From the nation’s capital this is DC Public Safety.  I’m your host Leonard Sipes.  Today’s topic, ladies and gentlemen, is film and video on offender reentry.  We have three people in the studio today, three experts, in terms of doing videos on the topic of offender reentry.  We have Gabriela Bulisova.  We have Greg Upwall, and Yavar Moghimi.  Gabriela is an independent photographer and instructor in Corcoran College of Art and Design.  Her website is gabrielabulisova.photoshelter.com. And Greg and Yavar, they’re graduates of the George Washington University Institute of Documentary Filmmaking.  They produced a film called Released to Life that’s gotten a lot of acclaim.  It’s currently under snagfilms.com and you can also go to releasedtolifemovie.com.  And to Gabriela, Greg and Yavar, welcome to DC Public Safety.

Greg Upwall:  All right.  Thanks for having us.

Gabriela Bulisova:  Thank you.  Pleasure.

Len Sipes:  All Gabriele, how badly did I screw up the name?

Gabriela Bulisova:  You did great.

Len Sipes:  Did I get it?  Was I in the ballpark even?

Gabriela Bulisova:  Absolutely right.

Len Sipes:  All three of you … I’ve had a lot of fun with talking with all three of you over the course of the last couple months.  And Greg and Yavar, we put together Released a Life.  I had a small part in terms of advising you.  That video won a slew of awards.  It won number one in the first place award in the Washington, DC Film Festival.  It’s won first place awards for a lot of film festivals.  That’s an interesting concept, Released to Life.  Tell me a little bit about the film.

Greg Upwall:  Well the film is basically a short documentary that we produced as students in the Documentary Filmmaking Center.  And it’s a composite character of different folks, basically, going through the reentry process in different stages and having served a different amount of time.  And kind of looking at the challenges that they’re facing coming back into society.  And having some experts kind of also weighing in on what the challenges that they see are.

Len Sipes:  Gabriela, you’ve done video, you’ve done still photography, you’ve worked this concept in a variety of mediums.  Why did you chose offender reentries?  I can think of puppies, I can think of children, I can think of older people, I can think of veterans coming home from war, I can think of a lot of other topics that are probably easier to do than people coming out of the prison system.  Why did you choose that topic?

Gabriela Bulisova:  I actually was introduced to the topic indirectly.  I was in process seeking to work on incarceration and reentry.  I was invited to speak at a [PH] colloquium at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.  And the topic was Women and War.  And I worked with refugees, primarily Iraqi refugees for quite some time.  I worked with them in Syria, in Middle East, and in Washington, DC.  So my first thought was I have to go to Iraq and document women in the war zone.  And then because I teach, my schedule, especially travel schedule, is quite limited.  I thought I might look the word war through a deeper or wider prism.  And I looked at war as conflict, as injustice, as violence.  And connected then conflict and women.  And did some research locally and found an organization called Our Place DC.

Len Sipes:  Oh yes.  A fabulous, fabulous place.

Gabriela Bulisova:  Absolutely.  Wonderful, small, underfunded organization –

Len Sipes:  Yes.

Gabriela Bulisova:  – that deals with gender-specific issues and does tremendous work helping women who are coming out of prison to readjust to society.

Len Sipes:  Okay.  So you like the easy topics of life.

Gabriela Bulisova:  Yes.

Len Sipes:  War in Iraq, women returning from the prison system.  Greg, let me go over to you.  You were involved; you and I have been talking more than anybody within this room about this concept of offenders coming out of the prison system.  Look, you guys are filmmakers, I’m part of government.  I’m stodgy, I’ve been around for a long time, I’m jaded, the system gets on my nerves.  You’re filmmakers, you’re artists, you have a fresh perspective, you have that artist soul.  You’re taking a look at the concept of people coming out of the prison system, why?  Greg, I’m going to start with you.

Greg Upwall:  Well it’s a good question, Len.  The group that made the film at GW, none of us really had a strong, personal history with the subject except for one student who was a DC native.  The others of us had a lot to learn.  We chose the topic because we felt that it was an important one, clearly.  But I don’t think any of us really understood what we were getting into.  We quickly realized that the situation is quite bleak when you look at the numbers coming out and the statistics of recidivism, and the lack of funding that exists.  And so as we began to conceptualize what this salient message of our film should be, we realized that our interest was to make a personal story out of the film. And we realized that many people can quickly get desensitized when you look at statistics and numbers, but sort of reflecting our own personal discovery was that these are human beings.  And I remember coming to this realization.  And a lot of the listeners out there might think well of course that’s the case, but we really connected with people.  We met people with real lives that clearly we could empathize with, that clearly had gotten on the wrong side of a situation.  And that was really where our passion and our interests kind of grounded itself.

Len Sipes:  And that was apparent in the film.  If you look at Released to Life and SnagFilms, or if you go to Releasedtolifemovie.com, you see that.  You can see the power of the filmmaking.  You can see the power of the stories. But Gabriela, I’ve seen your photography.  The question is more this, you’re bringing a fresh perspective to it.  You’re bringing the artist soul to it.  What you’ve just said all of us within the correctional or criminological community we know.  What is it that the artist sees that we’re not seeing, in terms of telling that story, anybody.  Gabriela, go ahead.

Gabriela Bulisova:  Exactly right.  As I said, I was new to the issue of incarceration and reentry.  And working with the women, I produced a combination of audio and still images.  I produced a project called Convictions where the women directly tell their own stories in their own voices.  And then I moved on to … then I started doing more research and I learned, as Greg said, the overwhelming statistics of the number of people just in DC, ten percent of DC population being incarcerated or having a criminal record and so on.  But still those are numbers, statistics.

Len Sipes:  What did you feel in your heart?

Gabriela Bulisova:  Right.

Len Sipes:  What was going through your heart, your mind, your soul when you were dealing with this topic?  That’s what I’m interested in.

Gabriela Bulisova:  Right.  As a documentary photographer, as a photo journalist, you want to learn more.  You ask questions why.  And when I … I moved from working with women to working with men.  And when I started working on a new project called Inside Outside, I was reminded of what an Iraqi friend of mine told me when the War on Iraq began.  He said, “I wish I can tattoo faces onto Iraqi people.”  And what he really meant was I wish that people here can see the real people, the real faces of the Iraqis, and thus we can connect with real people, so we can turn them from mass numbers or from news headlines into real people.

Len Sipes:  So you felt that the people that you were dealing with were rather anonymous, they lived anonymous lives.  And somehow, some way through your artistry you would try to capture who they are as human beings.

Gabriela Bulisova:  Absolutely right.

Len Sipes:  Yavar, you have to weigh in on this subject.

Yavar Moghimi:  Yeah.  I think the whole process of documentary filmmaking is about storytelling in the end.  And so especially making social documentaries, you want to tell the story that most people don’t know.  Or if they know, they don’t know why they should care about it.  So that’s … it doesn’t take much to listen to these people’s stories and realize the struggles that they’re facing and the limitations in a lot of the services that are out there to really help people transition back into society.  And then when you sort of look at it from even a financial perspective, too, you kind of wonder what are we doing in terms of all the money that’s being poured into this, and people are being sent back.  So it’s not only affecting the people themselves, but the tax payers as well.  And so we try to craft the message that was geared towards this is an issue that you should care about whether you know somebody who’s gone through the criminal system or not.

Len Sipes:  So why … and from a filmmaker’s perspective, from a creative perspective … what are we doing, what are we not doing to spread that message?  Because when I sit and talk … in the past with my dearly departed mother about the subject of reentry, she said, “Leonard, for the love of heavens we’ve got the elderly to take care of, we’ve got … ”  I’ve told this story a dozen times.  The listeners of this radio program have heard this story a dozen times.  “We’ve got the elderly to take care of, we’ve got school kids to take care of.”  My wife who was Vice President of PTA said, “Leonard, the money needs to go to the kids not to the people who have done harm to other human beings.  We’ve got to start with the kids, that’s where the great bulk of the money needs to go.”  We have a society that basically goes, “Ah, they’re not my favorite people.  I’m not quite sure I’m interested in this topic.”  And I’ll throw out a statistic just to consider.  That 80% of people caught up in the criminal justice system have substance abuse histories.  Approximately ten percent when they’re in the prison system get treatment.  So basically what we’re doing is not helping them transform, to cross that bridge from a tax burden to a tax payer.  We’re not doing that.  Why, is the question.  And I want to ask you guys.  Not as criminologists, but as artists.  Why are we not doing that?

Greg Upwall:  Maybe I can jump in there, Len.

Len Sipes:  Yeah, Greg.

Greg Upwall:  I think what we sort of … like I said before … what we really recognized is that a lot of people see the issue as an us and them situation.  It doesn’t affect them.  It’s a situation you can read about in the news; you hear statistics and so forth.  But quickly we were sort of impacted emotionally by the idea that it’s certainly not us and them.  And that families are involved.  And our whole justice system, we’re all … we take our civics classes growing up and we’re led to believe that our constitution provides fair justice and that once you’ve paid the due for your crime that you’re able to move on with your life.  And we realize it’s just not that easy.  Our goal quickly became … as I know myself and several others in our crew … we’re not the type to quickly give the benefit of the doubt to a criminal.  I came at it with my own biases.  But we realized that our goal ought to be to show that you can’t treat it as a black and white situation.  And it’s also become an issue that’s being done a disservice by reality TV programs have tend to portray prisons as violent places, and all criminals as violent people, and it just wasn’t the case.  We couldn’t avoid that fact.

Len Sipes:  Right.  I talked to an employer who watched Hard Time on one of the cable stations.  And basically said, “You want me to hire somebody from there?”  And I said, “Look, I’ve been in and out of prisons hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times.  It’s not like that.”  I said, “You have that that goes on in prisons on a periodic basis, but the overwhelming majority of prisons you go into, they’re some of the safest places on the face of the earth, believe it or not.  I’ve walked through dozens and dozens of prisons totally unescorted, totally without an ounce of fear.”  But that’s what they see.  So if that’s what they see on the six o’clock news, if that’s what they see in Hard Time, if that’s what they read about in the morning paper, that doesn’t create a lot of sympathy for what they call “ex-cons”.

Greg Upwall:  Yeah.

Len Sipes:  Gabriela, you want to … the question becomes how do you reach an audience?  How do you … these are extraordinarily powerful stories that all three of you have documented.  How do you convince people to take those very powerful stories seriously?

Gabriela Bulisova:  These are really good questions.  And I think their answers are very … questions are complex and the answers would be complex as well.  So I think you can dissect it to so many different aspects.  But if I may, I agree with what your mother was saying.  I think money should be put towards kids.  I think money should be put towards ward seven and ward eight and should be put towards education and treatment and prevention.  Because I think that’s how we can eliminate the later large rates of incarceration.  And unfortunately majority of the people in Washington, DC who are incarcerated, come from the poorest socially, economically deprived wards. So I certainly agree that that’s –

Len Sipes:  But remember this show goes out all throughout the country and all throughout the world.  And that applies to any city not only in the United States, but any city in the world.

Gabriela Bulisova:  Absolutely right.  But also again, just to use some numbers, we now … we’re so lucky to live in this country, we have so many advantages.  But then you look around the world, and this is the country that has the highest incarceration in the world.

Len Sipes:  Yes, it is.

Gabriela Bulisova:  Why do we incarcerate, what is it, 740 people per 100,000 people?  In Finland, I believe it’s 60 people per 100,000.

Len Sipes:  Huge difference.

Gabriela Bulisova:  So I think we have some homework to do here.

Len Sipes:  Want to reintroduce our guests, ladies and gentlemen.  We’re doing a, as you well know, a piece on film and video on the subject of offender reentry.  We have three experts in the studio with us today.  Gabriela Bulisova, Greg Upwall, and Yavar Moghimi.  Gabriela is an independent photographer instructor with the Corcoran College of Art and Design.  The website is gabrielabulisova.photoshelter.com.  Greg and Yavar are graduates of the George Washington University, the Institute of Documentary Filmmaking.  They did an extraordinary film called Released to Life.  It’s won three first place awards.  You can see it on snagfilms.com, go to the website and search Released to Life.  Or you can go directly to their website, releasedtolifeamovie.com. Gabriela, so we have the energy behind audio.  We have the energy behind video.  We have the energy behind stills.  These are very powerful stories.  Are they reaching the larger population, or are they just reaching the already converted to the topic?

Gabriela Bulisova:  We are independent filmmakers, photographers, so we can certainly use some help in terms of promoting our work.  But that is my hope.  If we … as you mentioned before, why should a population care about somebody who just came out of prison and is unemployed or homeless and so on?  And to me feel like if I can just engage, even if it’s a small number of people into a dialogue about that people need second chance, that it’s going to actually … that if we give somebody a job or ability to go to school and better their life, we’re going to improve public safety, community safety, create stronger families and so on. So is it reaching all the people?  I would like it, not yet.  I’m hopeful that it’s going to communicate to more people.  But for example just this past Friday an exhibition opened in Anacostia at the Gallery at Vivid Solutions called Inside Outside, where people can come and see photographs, see the video, and hear the stories of the people that I worked with.

Len Sipes:  Greg and Yavar, you and I have sat and talked on a couple different occasions about reaching this mass audience.  It is the contention of some people that unless we reach that mass audience, unless we move way beyond the already converted, the already convinced, unless we reach that audience we’re not going to make much difference.  Again, the idea that 80% of offenders caught up in the prison system have histories of substance abuse, ten percent are getting drug treatment.  There’s a gap that needs to be addressed.  The only way that that’s going to be addressed is through political will and money.  These sort of things cost money.  To do that you’ve got to convince the larger audience.  We’ve talked about public service announcements in terms of reaching a larger audience.  Is that possible, is that doable?  Do you think that we can appeal through art to the unconverted, to the general public, and convince them that this is a topic that they want to take on?

Greg Upwall:  Well I’ll jump in there.  I think that again, the answer would be yes.  And I think it is it in the way that that message, as Yavar said, it’s a question of storytelling.  The real message is not, “Hey, you should care about criminals, and that should be something you think about when you wake up in the morning.”  The message is more that I experienced individuals that were some of the most inspirational and driven individuals I’ve ever met in my life, that I’ve never met just in the general population.  That told me something about the power of rehabilitation and truly … one of the guys in our film says, “I was in the news once for doing something wrong.  I intend to be in the news again for doing something great.”

Len Sipes:  And that’s powerful.

Greg Upwall:  It’s powerful.

Len Sipes:  These stories are powerful, powerful stories.  When you sit … I’ve sat in prisons amongst 20, 30 offenders and we’ve had hour-long conversations about their lives, about their hopes, their dreams and what it is they want to do.  Now statistically speaking, 50% are back in prison within three years.  That’s a real problem.  There’s not enough being done.  So again, the outreach to the average person to convince them that this is something that is in their best interest.  Is it from a standpoint of morality, Yavar?  Is it from the standpoint of political correctness?  Is it the standpoint of religion?  Or is it from the standpoint of just it’s in your self-interest, it’s in your best interest from the standpoint of tax-paid dollars and your own safety, to support these sort of programs?  What’s the message?

Yavar Moghimi:  Right.  Each audience is going to have a different way that you can target them.  But I do think to get the broadest appeal in terms of the message, I think a big part of it does have to come down to you feeling safe in your community.  In one of our … Dwayne Betts, who’s one of the folks in our movie and he’s a Soros Justice Fellow, a previous ex-con who then is a poet and writer now.  In our movie he talks about we know that we lock people away, but we don’t know what the product is that’s coming out of that.  And I think that’s an important piece.  We’re putting people away for crimes that they committed, and the assumption is that somehow they are being rehabilitated in the process.  And if they’re coming out and they’re coming out safe for our communities.

Len Sipes:  Does anybody really believe they’re being rehabilitated in prison?  The surveys that I’ve seen is that most people don’t know and most people don’t care.  That’s part of the problem in terms of communicating.  And we have three communicators who specialize in this topic.  So tell me, is it that the public doesn’t care?  Not that they’re callous human beings, but they have so many other things on their plates.  Greg.

Greg Upwall:  I was going to say I think most people will sort of respond to the issue of their own safety and their family’s safety within their communities.  And also the issue that this is something that their tax-payer dollars are paying for, the prison system.  And we, time and time again, found individuals who had had access to educational training programs, books in prison.  This isn’t to say they were on some sort of a holiday, or being served at luxuries.  But the basic, you’re there, you’re serving time, what are you going to do while you’re there.  And it became for us pretty clear that those who had had access to those things, certainly did better by them.  And so it became a question of how do you use those incarceration dollars most effectively.

Yavar Moghimi:  Or even those that … and one of the centerpieces of our movie is the DC Central Kitchen which is a culinary job training program in the DC area.  A lot of the folks they work with are ex-offenders.  And to just see what they do, not only in terms of job training skills, but life skills, group therapy, substance abuse, they tackle a lot of the issues.  And they have a very high success rate in terms of getting folks employed, keeping folks out of jail, keeping folks out of drug treatments.

Len Sipes:  So all three of us agree they’re very, very powerful stories.  All three of us agree to the ones who are successful, they are very interesting from a human interest point of view.  All of us know that there are certain programs out there that can dramatically cut recidivism.  I’ve got the three of you here.  I’m going to keep hammering away.  Gabriela, what’s the theme?  Okay, now if we all know this, and we all understand this, and we all think wow, what a great topic from a journalistic point of view, from a human interest point of view, from a public safety point of view, from an effectiveness for your tax paid dollars point of view.  What are we missing in terms of communicating that to the larger audience?  There’s got to be a way.  There’s got to be a way.

Greg Upwall:  Yeah.  I will say that while we’ve gotten a lot of awards for our films, they tend to be student film festivals.  I would quickly say that we haven’t reached a mainstream audience.

Len Sipes:  How do you reach the mainstream audience?

Greg Upwall:  And I’m not sure we have the answer for that.  But I do know that the messages that are being portrayed about the violence of prisons and things, that it is important, I think, to find ways to show the other side of that.

Len Sipes:  How do we do that?

Greg Upwall:  And so maybe it is a public service announcement.  Maybe a series of campaigns.  I think it’s finding engaged people, like ourselves, that want to take on these topics in a sensitive manner with … that are looking at more than just the sort of sensationalized way of portraying things.

Len Sipes:  But we all get together and talk to the converted.  That’s my only problem with this issue.  It’s not going out and talking to the person who lives 20 miles outside of the city.  Look, this is an issue that has a profound impact on any city in the United States.  It’s an issue that has a profound impact on any city in the world.  The crime and justice issue.  If we can take 50% of these individuals and provide them with the services and they stay out of the prison system, you’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars saved.  You’re talking about tens of thousands of crimes going uncommitted.  You’re talking about something that is clearly what all of us want, yet … if I say cancer, people go, “How can I help?”  If I say child abuse, people say, “How can I help?”

Gabriela Bulisova:  Right.

Len Sipes:  If I say offender reentry, they go, “Well, what about the children?”

Yavar Moghimi:  This isn’t a problem that’s unique to criminal justice.  I feel like there’s a tendency in general to put money in … and you think about healthcare.  Spending money when people are already sick.  Spending money when people need the emergency room as opposed to putting it up front for their preventative public health visits, you know, those types … this is a common sort of short-sightedness of a lot of bureaucratic processes where the money just isn’t put up front and it’s sort of an out of sight, out of mind mentality until all the people who are coming out of prison from the war on drugs are suddenly all back in society again.  And what do we do with all these folks?  I think there’s just a common problem of short-sightedness in general with a lot of these issues.

Len Sipes:  Well here’s a work assignment for six months from now.  Because [Ph] we’re redo this show six months from now by the way.  Because you guys are my guinea pigs.  What is the theme?  What is the central message that we can communicate to citizens in general to really say, “Hey, you know what, it’s probably in my best interest to support these sort of programs for people coming out of the prison system”?  That’s going to be your homework assignment.  So when we reconvene, you’re going to say, “Hey, I came up with successful themes.  This is what we need to say.”  Right?

Greg Upwall:  Sounds good.

Gabriela Bulisova:  Sure.

Yavar Moghimi:  Yeah.

Gabriela Bulisova:  If I may, I would just say that again the topic is so massive, so abstract.  And I think all of us grew up with that notion of incarceration bad, prisoners bad, felons bad.  So I think the topic is so stigmatized and the people are so stigmatized that it’s going to take some time to actually remove that stigma of incarceration.  And I think that’s where we can come in as filmmakers, as artists.  We might not have the answers, but perhaps we can at least start to engage people in a dialogue.

Len Sipes:  People ask me why I was doing this radio show today.  And I said, “Because we in the bureaucracy aren’t going to convince anybody.”  I said, “That’s either going to come from the offenders themselves, or it’s going to come from the artist community.”  They’re the ones who are going to figure this out.  We’re not.  We’re bureaucrats.  We’re government bureaucrats.  We’re not terribly creative, we’re overly cautious, we’re going to be pressed.  And the answers going to come from the offender community itself or from the artist community, because they’re the ones who are going to tell us, “Hey, this is the direction we need to go in.”  Am I being patronizing, or does that have a thread of truth to it?

Yavar Moghimi:  Well as you were talking about what are ways we can have this message heard, I think TV is so powerful in that way.  And whether it is through a public service announcement … or I wonder how we could affect these shows that are sensationalizing being incarcerated.  And realize that they’re having a damaging affect in society.  Because I … there are –

Len Sipes:  But they’re not going to go away.

Yavar Moghimi:  They’re not going away, but there’s got to be a way to at least consult or have some sort of role in having a different message being told, too.  And part of the internet and social media and things like that are also new, powerful tools to really spread that message too.

Len Sipes:  Thirty seconds.  Is it powerful to counteract the cable news shows?  Is social media powerful enough to counteract the bad news that comes out from the morning newspapers or from television coverage or from the cable shows?

Greg Upwall:  Well, whether it is or not, Leonard, my answer would be that that doesn’t mean we don’t keep pushing those messages.  And I think that people do like positive messages at the end of the day.  And we found some positive stories among these individuals.  And those success stories need to be told.

Len Sipes:  Well we’re going to bring you all back at a certain point.  We’re going to talk about those success stories.  Because we’re going to come up with some sort of PSA and it’s going to go national and you’re all going to get awards and it’s going to be powerful and it’s going to be influential.  I know that in my heart.  In any event, ladies and gentlemen, our show today has been on film and video on offender reentry.  We’ve had three guests with us today.  And one I’m going to try for … wants to get her name correctly, Gabriela Bulisova.  Greg Upwall, Yavar Moghimi.  Gabriela is studying portrait photography, journalistic photography the Institute of Documentary … oh, I’m sorry, that’s Greg and Yavar.  She’s an instructor to Corcoran College of Art and Design. Gabrielabulisova.photoshelter.com, it will be in the show notes.  Greg and Yavar, they are graduates of the George Washington University Institute of Documentary Filmmaking.  Again, they did the award-winning film Released to Life, which you can see on snagfilm.com.  You’d go to SnagFilm and just search Released to Life, or go to Releasedtolifemovie.com.  Ladies and gentlemen, this is DC Public Safety.  We appreciate your interest and comments.  And please have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

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Social Media for Law Enforcement-DC Public Safety-213,000 Requests a Month

May 18, 2010 by

Welcome to DC Public Safety – radio and television shows on crime, criminal offenders and the criminal justice system.

See http://media.csosa.gov for our television shows, blog and transcripts.

This radio program is available at http://media.csosa.gov/podcast/audio/2010/02/social-media-for-law-enforcement-dc-public-safety-213000-requests-a-month/

We welcome your comments or suggestions at leonard.sipes@csosa.gov or at Twitter at http://twitter.com/lensipes.

– Audio begins –

Len Sipes: From my microphones in downtown Washington, DC, this is DC Public Safety. I’m your host Leonard Sipes, and today’s program is about social media in law enforcement, how the law enforcement community and eventually, hopefully, the entire criminal justice community will take on social media. What is social media? It’s websites, it’s blogs, it’s Twitter, it’s Facebook, it’s radio, it’s television. It’s basically a way of communicating with citizens. It’s a way of making sure that citizens and your criminal justice entity or your police department is having a meaningful conversation. You’re giving them interesting stuff to listen to or watch, and they’re giving you good information in return about what’s going on in their communities or how your police department or criminal justice agency can do a better job. Our guests today are Dan Alexander. He is Chief of Police of the Boca Raton, Florida, Police Department, and I’ll be giving out everything that Dan does in his website in a couple of seconds. Laurie Stevens, she is the Chair of Web Design for the New England Institute of Art, but interestingly enough, she’s putting on a conference, Social Media in Law Enforcement, the SMILE Conference on April 7, 8, and 9 in Washington, DC, but before we get into our program, the usual commercial, we are way beyond 200,000 request in the monthly basis for DC Public Safety Radio Television blog and transcripts, media.csosa.com. We are incredibly appreciative of all the e-mails that you get back to us with the comments that you get back to us in terms of our products. If you want to get back in touch with me directly, it’s Leonard L-E-O-N-A-R-D.sipes S-I-P not T but P E-S @C-S-O-S-A.gov or you can follow me via Twitter at twitter/lenssipes. One word. Back to our guest, Dan Alexander, Chief of Police, Boca Raton, and Laurie Stevens, New England Institute of Art, the person in charge of the SMILE conference. Welcome to DC Public Safety.

Laurie Stevens: Thanks, Len.

Len Sipes: Laurie, we’re going to go with your first. Now, what does the Chair of Web Design of the New England Institute of Art? You get this hoitsy-toitsy sense of free flowing artist, mixed up with the mundane, everyday world of law enforcement. How did you get involved with working with law enforcement?

Laurie Stevens: Well, it’s really the other half of that title is Web Design and Interactive Media. Certainly social media is part of that interactive media world, and so as part of my job at the college, I’m certified in social media as a strategist and I make it part of my work to stay on top of those things, and then I have been working with law enforcement just with a couple of departments that I have been friends with for a number of years and it just kind of grew from there. People started noticing the work that we were doing, and all of a sudden I was doing more and more, and then I got on Twitter and all of a sudden I was kind of catapulted into this arena and decided to go with it, and that was some months back, so now it’s just such a huge part of my life. But the two worlds come together right at the intersection with social media.

Len Sipes: And Dan, now, let’s see. You have done everything. I’m very impressed. www.bocaviper.com is your website. Now you do Twitter, you do Facebook, you do MySpace, you do interactive mapping, you do e-mail alerts, you do offender notifications, you do a television show, you do a blog. That is just both admirable and interesting, but you say the key issue here is not the fact that you’re doing social media; it’s what you’re accomplishing for the citizens of Boca Raton.

Dan Alexander: Absolutely. I think you can’t forget your fundamental mission whenever you decide to take something new on like social media, and that mission is to be a community policing organization, community-oriented in the way we approach our business, so keeping that in mind, it’s really a matter of connecting and how you connect with people and how you push information. I think there’s some other interesting parts that also fall in, in terms of how the media covers, how media has changed. I think that social media falls right in line with our orientation to be better connected, to be more transparent, and to insure that we’re getting the word out.

Len Sipes: Now you know it’s interesting because this can be manipulative. I do social media here, radio, television, blog, and transcript at DC Public Safety, and it’s to the point where you can control your own media to a large degree. You’re no longer dependent upon mainstream media. You’re no longer dependent upon the newspaper and the television stations and the radio stations to get word out to the public. You can do that at your time and at your leisure and at a pace that you control.

Dan Alexander: Yeah. What’s interesting about that is that when we started to do this, we had a media outlet come cover us and actually they quoted a professor that expressed concern that we would be putting our spin on the news, and really at first we were taken aback, but the issue really is adding another layer and I think that’s what we’ve tried to explain to people is that our test is not to try to replace traditional media as a source of information, but to add another layer such that people can get a different view or just fundamentally get the information because media is not covering nearly as much as it used to.

Len Sipes: Laurie, is there an issue where anybody should be concerned about it? We are under a real obligation to, when we use the social media channels, to talk about everything, warts and all, correct?

Laurie Stevens: Right. And I think, well, Dan’s point is, it’s what I love about the work he does. Initially he had this – I believe it was a television station he was saying, was taken aback by the fact that he was putting out his information himself, but he embraced that, and what he’s saying is its just one more layer. He’s not trying to replace the media; nobody really is. It’s just trying to get more information. When you think about it, the police departments have a lot of good information that the media just doesn’t want to cover. It’s just not worthy of the 6:00 news in their opinion. Another department I work with had, very early on when they went on Twitter for example, a citizen was surprised and commented, they didn’t know they had crime in their town because the cops were tweeting all night long and during the day of what they were coming across. So it really is expanding the amount of information that’s getting out to citizens in any community, so we’re fortunate enough to have this.

Len Sipes: The individual police officers were tweeting?

Laurie Stevens: Oh, yeah.

Len Sipes: That’s interesting.

Laurie Stevens: Dan, you’ve got some individual police officers tweeting, but I know of several departments that have police officers tweeting, and then in one case, we tweeted into the official police stream, the tweets of each officer as they tweet, and we put that right on their homepage. So the citizens can see that some of these officers are tweeting and maybe a photo of an arrest they made during the night, not any kind of confidential information, but if it was a bad DUI arrest and getting out those DUI messages time and time again, and the citizens are seeing this is happening in their own town the night before as opposed to maybe somewhere else where they think it doesn’t happen here, so they’re realizing this stuff does happen. It happens every single night right here where I live, and it really opens their eyes and ears to these messages.

Dan Alexander: I think that it raises some serious policy issues about how you approach media, and I think one of the distractions in the self media debate has been well, now we have to write a whole new policy on social media. I wouldn’t necessarily say that that’s not the case. I think that the way we recognize it is it’s another form of media, so the policies are going to be pretty consistent with the way we deal with the regular media, so definitely seeing some negative impacts of social media in some cases, but again, I think we just have to realize it’s media and our policies should be pretty consistent.

Laurie Stevens: But those negative impacts, Dan, wouldn’t you say that those negative things that you’re talking about would have happened or in the same way? In other words, these officers aren’t having to learn anything new in terms of how to be officers; they just have new tools.

Dan Alexander: Absolutely.

Laurie Stevens: If they’re going to do things that they probably shouldn’t be doing, they’re probably going to exercise that poor judgment in another way even without social media.

Dan Alexander: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a tool, and obviously many tools can be used properly or improperly.

Len Sipes: But the bottom line is that because we had sort of an esoteric conversation thus far, and my sense is that for the kids in the audience, and I’m being really stereotypical here because I know a 1000 times more about social media than my daughters, but for the kids out there, they’re going to say yeah, I understand intrinsically what it is that you’re saying. For the criminal justice community listening to this program, the bottom line is that you capture bad guys, you have conversations with the community that helps them, that makes them feel better about the police department, you accomplish operational objectives through social media, so this is, to you from what I understand, Dan, in terms of our conversation before the show, this is just as important to you as having a sufficient number of police cars. This is just as important to you as having radio communications between your dispatchers and your officers. This is just a tool to help lower crime rates and to get information to citizens so they can take their own action. This is an operational issue, right?

Dan Alexander: Absolutely. I think you look at it from that perspective and also from public relations and marketing perspective, and from the operational standpoint, I can think of two examples of how it’s had a direct impact, the first being a theft of a flat screen television out of the local mall. A video that we put online as part of our social media outreach and a witness picking up on the suspect in the video, and then passing that information along to us and us clearing a case and recovering property. Another instance from the intelligence perspective is a local criminal enterprise had taken root and their use of social media and using our resources and our investigators looking at their material, and without getting too much into it, developing information that was critical to developing a case on organized criminal enterprise, so those are two examples of how social media has a real impact in terms of law enforcement.

Len Sipes: We’re going to be having the Chief of the Community Oriented Policing Program from the U.S. Department of Justice on our air in a couple of weeks, and one of the reasons why he is coming in is for the very reasons that we’re talking about, that the more information that you get out to the community and the more interaction that you have, the more that they’re going to give to you in terms of your ability to keep them safe or solve crimes.

Dan Alexander: Absolutely. I think that’s the other part of it, is making the connection. I think if we’re brutally honest about our ability, we’re really the intervening variable. You have your community and the involvement of your citizens, and at the end the result is your quality of life and level of crime. We’re in the middle of that equation, and we’re absolutely dependent on a resident not only in terms of providing information on criminals, but also taking care of themselves. I think that the majority of us, unfortunately, have property crime to deal with and obviously violent crime, but typically property crime is the major portion of what we deal with and much of that can be prevented just by getting the right message out in terms of crime prevention, so there are so many different angles to the social media thing that are important in my mind.

Len Sipes: Go ahead, Laurie, please.

Laurie Stevens: I was just going to kind of piggyback on what he saying. I think in terms of sharing more information in both directions, a lot of what is happening here, and it’s getting back to the word social and social media, it’s the building of relationships and the building of trust between law enforcement and their community. Even though they’re still the cops and you’re still the citizen and they still have the authority, something else is happening in that whole area of trust in one another, and I think that is really key. It’s not very tangible, but that’s really key in why there’s more information going back and forth because there’s trust being built.

Len Sipes: Right. And whether it’s done electronically or whether it’s done face to face, the bottom line is trust. Trust gets you more information. It prompts the community to take greater action to protect themselves. I mean, it’s a win-win situation all around.

Laurie Stevens: Well, it’s absolutely going back to the beats, the community policing philosophy, in my mind. I’m not a cop and Dan will speak to that lots better than I will, but it’s really getting back to those relationships. With this technology, you can build more relationships faster.

Len Sipes: Now speaking of relationships, this question goes out to either one of you when I’m going to tie it into the conference, Social Media in Law Enforcement Conference. If people are interested in this, it’s April 7, 8, and 9 in Washington, DC. It’s called the SMILE Conference, Social Media in Law Enforcement, that’s how SMILE comes out. It’s theSMILEconference.com, so it’s www.theSMILEconference.com or http://theSMILEconference.com, April 7, 8, 9 in Washington, DC. Social Media in Law Enforcement. The reason I’m so enthused about this conference is the fact that it helps us talk to people in the criminal justice system and it helps us to promote social media because, again, I had this conversation with another national criminal justice organization this morning. People are simply wary of doing this. They’re afraid to do it because they live in sort of a protected bubble. They have this sense that the less news there is the better off for everybody, and that’s just the antithesis of what it is that we’re trying to do through social media, but that fear does exist within the criminal justice system, does it not? Either one of you.

Dan Alexander: Absolutely. Yeah. Obviously it’s changed and unknown and that’s a concern for people that like their world in order, but beyond that we are very secretive. Laurie knows that I wrote a piece early on, basically five or six barriers to law enforcement use of social media. It’s fast and we’re not. We obviously develop cases and move things along, and it takes time. Social media is immediate, so there are some barriers there. We are very cynical and protective, by nature, of our information, and so that works against us in that respect. We’re also suspect in terms of our relationships with people. I don’t want someone following me or being my friend or fan that I don’t know too well, because I like gathering intelligence on the people that I have relationships with if I’m thinking from a traditional police perspective, so there are a number of reasons why I think there hesitancy on our part to get involved.

But going back to what you said earlier, connecting electronically, it’s interesting about what we first got out there on Twitter in particular, we would get the feedback, Boca Police is following me – I guess I should slow down. Things like that that you know are out there that people are thinking. Or Boca Chief shows up as a follower, okay, it even makes people nervous to a certain extent, but I think it’s a great icebreaker. I really do. People see that you’re involved in this form. I think that they think more in terms of accessibility and the fact that we’re people too, so I think we’ve got to start turning some of that negative into positive.

Len Sipes: We’re more than halfway through the program. Our guests today are Dan Alexander, Chief of Police of Boca Raton, Florida. His website www.bocaviper.com, B-O-C-A-V-I-P-E-R, one word, dot com. Dan is involved in everything on the face of the earth – Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, interactive mapping, websites, e-mail alerts, offender notifications, TV shows, and a blog. Laurie Stevens is our other guest. She is with the New England Institute of Arts. She is Chair of Web Design in Social Media. She is putting on a conference called Social Media in Law Enforcement, the SMILE Conference. The website address is theSMILEconference.com, one word. So, www or http://theSMILEconference.com. All right. So we’re into the second half of the program. This is going by like wildfire. I think we need to move off of this fear thing because it’s interesting – so many individuals throughout the country, so many corporations are embracing social media wholeheartedly, and it’s become a huge part of what it is that they do and how they operate, but we in the criminal justice system just are, we’re just a bunch of, we’re a bit stodgy, and for an organization that has to communicate with a public, this is a fantastic way of doing it.

Laurie Stevens: It is fantastic and it’s inexpensive and it’s fast, and it’s like Dan said, cops aren’t exactly known for changing, yet this guy, Dan, had his own social media police, not an officer, a civilian, but a social media manager, over a year ago. I was listening to him and kind of chuckling thinking, he’s not all that afraid, because he’s out there really leading the pack. And to that point, I think that another officer friend of mine made the analogy that it’s like freight train and it isn’t about a [PH] decision anymore Len; it’s taken off. You’re either going to get hit by it or you’re going to get on and you’re going to ride it, or you’re going to wake up one day real surprised and wonder what happened and how did I lose control of this situation.

Len Sipes: I found a website, go ahead, please.

Laurie Stevens: No, I’m just saying that I think law enforcement, I don’t know about the criminal justice organizations as well as law enforcement, I think law enforcement isn’t that far behind other businesses. I really don’t. The ones I’m talking to, everybody’s interested in doing it. They are a little fearful, but they’re trying to figure out their way.

Len Sipes: I ran across the other night a website, Cops Who Blog. That’s part of the NING network, N-I-N-G, Cops Who Blog or Cops That Blog, I can’t remember, but I’ve been interacting with them in terms of my own promotional activities, and they’re really interesting, the conversations I’ve had with them and talking about some of the websites and some of the things that they’re doing. You’re right. There’s a lot of energy, but once again, and I don’t want to beat this horse to death, I do think that there is, and this is the conversation I had this morning, that folks are just reluctant. I was talking to some people in public relations a little while ago, and said, Leonard, I’m a dang gone good public affairs officer. I know how to talk to the media, I know all about my agency, I’m not friends but I have a good relationship with the folks in the media, I’m constantly available, and so I can do radio shows, I can do television shows, I can do talk radio, and I can write, and now, on top of everything I know how to do, now you want me to start producing radio shows, you want me to start doing websites, you want me to start doing blogs, you want me to start Twittering. Where does this begin and where does this end? His point was traditionally a public affairs officer had a set amount of skills and that’s all he or she had to worry about. Now those skill sets need to double or triple, and now their job has become much more complex and they’re not exactly hopping and skipping and smiling into the social media process because it’s a lot more work.

Dan Alexander: Yeah. Some of that can be shared, and we talked about this early on, that I’m fortunate to have a resource here that is involved in it and primarily is his job function, but I think that a lot of places also have to have policing officers and crime prevention officers or use their regular officers to get engaged, and there’s some risk involved, obviously, but again, I think in terms of return on investment, it’s huge. We talk about risk, and I mentioned in the ConnectedCops.net piece that I wrote for Laurie, there is a risk in ignoring social media. I’ve watched my colleagues try to shut off a particular outlet or media outlet in particular because they don’t like a story that was run, and then they go back again. Why? Because their constituents get their news from that outlet, so you have to be there and there’s a risk ignoring it. The fact of the matter is they’re talking about you out there. The question is whether you want to get engaged in the discussion or not.

Len Sipes: But isn’t that the bottom line to both of you? And Dan, you said it perfectly – the conversation is going on whether you engage that conversation or not, so if that conversation about your agency is going to take place, wouldn’t you like to be part of that conversation in a very meaningful way? And I’m not talking about a manipulative way. I’m not talking lying. I’m talking about a very honest, open approach to sharing information with the community. If that conversation is going to take place, why don’t you want to be part of it? That’s my question.

Dan Alexander: Absolutely. I don’t see how you can, you can’t avoid it. No.

Laurie Stevens: I think it’s a lost opportunity if you’re not engaging. You know, Len, back to that skill set that you mentioned; I really think it’s not that it’s more complicated. There’s a learning curve there, but once you get over it you’d use them. They feed each other. You can use them to talk to each other. You can use them to build upon one another, the tools that I’m talking about themselves. It’s really not that hard. This is lots easier than learning how to write copy for print and lots easier than producing a television show. Tweeting, Facebook, it’s not hard to learn. It’s just getting over that hump.

Len Sipes: Well, even putting up a website, though because it’s interesting. Just a couple of years ago, a website was a $20,000 to $30,000 proposition and that was serious money. With WordPress-based designs and you’re talking about $100 to buy a professional website. Now you still have to populate that website and you may pay somebody to set that website up for you, but you’re not talking about $20,000, $30,000, $40,000. You’re talking about a couple of hundred dollars.

Laurie Stevens: If that. If you can grab WordPress and find a seam that you like.

Len Sipes: It can be a lot less than that, yes.

Laurie Stevens: It can be. It can be. It’s just not that hard, and not only that, but you don’t need a professional to update it. With WordPress and tools like that, [PH] Jumla, you can get right in and any amateur can get in and daily edit their content. It’s just not that hard.

Len Sipes: Right, but it does take time. So the point is to our brethren within the criminal justice community, it’s not that expensive. It’s not that risky. The conversation’s going on about you anyway, so why not get involved and you can accomplish operational goals. We were able to convince 530 criminal offenders with warrants to voluntarily surrender in Washington, DC, and we did it principally through social media. We did it principally through social media, so that’s my biggest law enforcement / criminal justice example of how you can accomplish operational objectives through social media.

Laurie Stevens: Well, there you go. Talk about your ROI right there. What would that have cost you without however you did that?

Len Sipes: Well, when I was an ex-cop out there serving warrants, they would give me a stack of warrants on the midnight shift and if I served one a week I was lucky, and here it is 530 people voluntarily surrendering to a church.

Dan Alexander: You go back to what you were talking about earlier, too, in terms of developing the informational content. You’re doing it anyway. We did the traditional release. It’s really just a matter of either copying, pasting, or simply changing it up a little bit to fit the format that’s appropriate for the social media outlet. Yeah, I think there is going to be a little bit more time and effort involved, but the payoff is significant. There’s no doubt about it.

Len Sipes: And it’s not just the younger individuals. I read a piece yesterday of how the younger people are bailing out of Facebook and going back to MySpace because they’re tired of their parents and grandparents being on MySpace and trying to be friends with them.

Laurie Stevens: I wouldn’t know, Len. My kids won’t friend me.

Len Sipes: My kids did so reluctantly, Laurie.

Dan Alexander: Yeah, well, that’s why a lot of parents got into it. They wanted to see what was going on, and you just look at the sheer numbers of people that are in social media. That’s the other concern that probably sits out there, is that it’s just a niche group – well, no, everyone is in social media and it’s where people are getting their content. The point I made, too, on the piece is that you talk about community – you’ll go visit someone for a Crime Watch meeting in a neighborhood, why not go into social media and visit the community that exists there. It really just doesn’t make sense.

Len Sipes: Instead of talking to 30 people, why don’t you talk to tens of thousands of people? It’s the same message. It’s the same effort.

Dan Alexander: Yeah. I think the challenge, a couple of challenges that I think about with this thing is are we reaching the right audience? I think that’s a concern in terms of trying to make it local. I know we need to do a better job of ensuring that we’re achieving a connection with our local group. The other part of it that isn’t so much of a concern, I think it’s an opportunity, is looking at how we can develop some of our own social media tools to ensure that we’re creating virtual communities within our jurisdiction. I think those are a couple of things that sit out there right now that are challenges, but not negatives. I think it’s something that is just going to involve a little more time and effort on our part.

Len Sipes: Well, you can always make fun of us northerners sitting in the snow while you’re all sitting down there in the warm weather.

Laurie Stevens: Don’t encourage him – he does that.

Dan Alexander: Absolutely.

Laurie Stevens: And he does it over Twitter, Len.

Len Sipes: You can have that cathartic relationship with your community. Laurie, you’re up there in Boston, right?

Laurie Stevens: Yes, I am.

Len Sipes: Yeah. And believe it or not, Baltimore and Washington, our metropolitan area, got more snow than any other major city this year. So Buffalo and Minneapolis, you’re now taking a backseat to DC and Baltimore. Any final thoughts? We have a minute left.

Dan Alexander: No. I would just say that we’ve been real excited about the feedback we’ve gotten and the tangible results that we’ve gotten from social media. I’m excited to see what the future holds. I think we’re still in law enforcement and in criminal justice on the front end of this thing, and I think it’s important for us through opportunities like the SMILE Conference to get together and see where we are, and see what we can do to improve our approach to community policing.

Len Sipes: Laurie, you got about 30 seconds. Laurie?

Laurie Stevens: No, just to piggyback on that – I think that law enforcement is, that adoption curve is just starting to turn up, and it’s just starting to really hit the masses. Not huge masses, but we have the early adopters like Dan and a few others, and now everyone else is seeing what they’re doing, seeing the successes that they’re having, and now is the time where everybody is really jumping onboard, and it’s going to get real exciting here.

Len Sipes: Well, in terms of size, I’m doing 2.5 million requests a year.

Laurie Stevens: You are?

Len Sipes: Yes, and I’m spending less than $15,000 a year to do it, so the point is, is that this is powerful. People in the criminal justice system need to understand how powerful this is and how relatively inexpensive it is.

Dan Alexander: Absolutely.

Laurie Stevens: Well, I think we went a long way towards that today, I hope.

Len Sipes: Good. Our guests today, ladies and gentlemen, Dan Alexander, Chief of Police, Boca Raton, Florida. His Web address, www.bocaviper.com. Bocaviper is one word. Doing Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, interactive mapping, websites, e-mail alerts, offender notification, TV shows, blog, and just about everything else on the face of the Earth. I’m very, very impressed with Boca Raton and Dan Alexander from what I heard today. Laurie Stevens, the New England Institute of Art, Chair of Web Design and Social Media. She is putting on a conference, Social Media in Law Enforcement, the SMILE Conference in Washington, DC, on April 7, 8, and 9. This is the year 2010. The SMILE Conference is the address, theSMILEconference is all one word, dot com, and you can get information about that. Ladies and gentlemen, like I said at the beginning of the program, we continue to be really impressed by your letters and in some cases phone calls, even though I don’t give out my address, your comments to our comments box, which come in to about 10 a day, and some of your e-mails, feel free to share them. Some of them are about the show and some of them are not, and I do the best I can to answer those e-mails that aren’t about the show, and some are just downright tragic and we try to do our very best to help you with local resources and plug you in to those local resources. But in any event, we really appreciate your patronage and have yourselves a very, very pleasant day.

– Audio ends –

Terms: social media, SMILE, Social Media in Law Enforcement, police, law enforcement

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Filed Under: Audio Podcast, Criminal Justice, Media, Police, Social Media