Police get online with social media

Area Commander Chief Inspector Ken Mawhinney and Leader editor John Hooks

Published on 11/09/2012 09:00

LOCAL police have embraced the world of social media and say “it’s going really well”.

Banbridge PSNI are on Twitter and Facebook and Area Commander Chief Inspector Ken Mawhinney, who met with the Leader at one of our editorial clinics last week, said people are engaging to great effect.

The page, which was set up around a month ago, has more than 500 ‘likes’ and plenty of conversation around local crime as well as events happening in the area.

While the page is used mainly for posting information about road closures and crime updates police said they want to make it clear it is definitely not somewhere people should report crime especially in emergency situations.

The site is not monitored 24/7 meaning people should still use the emergency and non-emergency numbers when they are seeking police assistance.

The page is often somewhere people can ask questions of their local officers and Neighbourhood teams whether it is about the Hillsborough Oyster Festival or crime prevention advice.

But it is also a forum for police to let people know where and when they’re on patrol and about any significant arrests they make.

During one night on patrol last month police alerted Facebook users to an arrest they had made for drink-driving - people were quick to praise the arrest.

Following riots on the Scarva Road in early August police were able to update people on arrests and the situation following the trouble.

A police spokesperson said, “The Facebook and Twitter pages are going really well. People can ask non-emergency questions and officers get back to them.

“We see it as a really good way to engage with people and let them know of our work in the local area.”

News

Looking for...

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Make Model Price from Price to

Property

Search for a house

Buy Rent

Bedrooms Price from Price from Price to Price to

What is a Cookie?
What is a Flash Cookie?
Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?
About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.
This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.
Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.
The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:
- Revenue Science ►
  
  A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Google Ads ►
  
  Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Webtrends / Google Analytics ►
  
  This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.
- Dart for Publishers ►
  
  This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.
- ComScore ►
  
  ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.
- Local Targeting ►
  
  Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.
- Grapeshot ►
  
  We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.
- Subscriptions Online ►
  
  Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.
- Add This ►
  
  Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
- 3rd Party Cookies ►
  
  We use Advertising agencies to provide us with some of the advertising on our websites. These include (but are not limited to) Specific Media, The Rubicon Project, AdJug, AdConion, Context Web. Please click on the provider name to visit their opt-out page.

Police get online with social media

Top stories

News