Cops and social media can be friends

By Madeleine White

Tuesday the OPP announced it was joining Twitter and would be posting links to its news release on its feed.
 
While it’s great that we can now have an instant notification of a new OPP press release to our smart phone, automating new cop reports is not really that helpful.
 
Sgt. Tim Burrows, who is one of the media officers for Toronto Police’s Traffic Services Unit, has been using Twitter for a while now and he knows that he can promote road safety a lot more effectively when his interactions on social medias are more than automated posts.
 
As a reporter, I really appreciate Sgt. Burrow’s tweets because he is good enough to announce online when he is scheduled to arrive at the scene of an accident.
 
But as a citizen, I appreciate it more because he is starting a discussion on street smarts that may otherwise not take place on something like Twitter.
 
I think that other police forces ought to use Sgt. Burrow’s pioneering efforts as a model to become more responsive and engaged with their communities. And I think all of us could learn from his 140-character wisdom with all of these recent pedestrian deaths.

Maddie White is a reporter in the "box" where she awaits breaking news impatiently. Outside of the radio room, she is a journalism Masters student at Ryerson University. mwhite@thestar.ca