Delta police say social media is playing more and more of a critical role in public safety in the city.
Police Chief Neil Dubord told members of the Delta police board at their monthly meeting last week that social media is just another product of the changing world of policing.
He said social media allows for significant levels of interaction on a variety of issues, including public safety and crime trends.
“Residents in Delta are highly engaged through social media channels and discuss a variety of issues associated to public safety,” said Dubord. “It used to be that people would walk into our community police stations and talk to the person at the front counter, flag an officer down on the street or call our complaint line, but now there are so many different ways of communicating with social media being one of them.”
Dubord said the department’s communications staff actively monitors the Ladner Landing, Tsawwassen Loop and North Delta Community Corner Facebook pages, among others, to provide outreach and engagement.
“This can be challenging, as posts and ensuing discussions may mention the DPD generally, service levels, complaints as well as public safety issues,” Dubord pointed out. “In order for the DPD to protect its brand and reputation, our communications team attempts to keep abreast of discussion pages as it is important to understand what is impacting a neighbourhood.”
An example of this interaction was a recent post on the Loop Facebook page where a resident was a victim of a break and enter.
“The post garnered substantial discussion and people felt unsafe in their community,” he said. “We caught onto the thread and I was able to put out a message that we were, in fact, seeing a decrease in break and enters in Tsawwassen and we were not experiencing the same level of disruption that the residents were facing. We are following up with several members of this page in early May to discuss it further.
“This is the type of work we need to do now. We need to look at these pages and hopefully communicate within that. But it takes tremendous resources, so I bring this forward to say that this is important. It’s a way to engage with the community in our policing model and at some point you may see us come forward asking for some help with this.”
