Thursday, September 23, 2010

My Say

A recent article in the Post-Dispatch questioned the Department’s crime statistics. As I told the Post-Dispatch, I stand behind our statistics and reporting methods. Read my say here.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Welcome A”Board”

Today marks the first Board meeting for a newly appointed member of the Board of Police Commissioners. Former St. Louis County Chief of Police Jerry Lee comes to the Board with more than 30 years of experience in law enforcement, both as a police officer and as the leader of a large police agency. He joins Dr. Michael Gerdine who is a chiropractor and a successful small-business owner, Mr. Richard Gray who is heavily involved in our community as the Executive Director of the St. Louis Gateway Sports Foundation and former Judge Bettye Battle-Turner who is now an attorney in private practice following her years on the bench as a municipal judge. Board members are appointed by the Governor of Missouri with the exception of Mayor Francis Slay who is an ex-officio member, which means he is a part of the Board by virtue of the fact that he is Mayor of St. Louis. St. Louis City Mayor’s have always been ex-officio members who have the same voting rights as all members of the Board appointed by the Governor. I look forward to continuing to work with the Board to accomplish the goals of our police department, to manage the business of our police department and to continue our efforts in making the City of St. Louis an even safer place for your families and mine.

Friday, September 10, 2010

@SLMPD

After sitting on the sidelines to check out how other police agencies used Twitter, we’re finally throwing our hats in the ring. You can find our official police department Twitter page at www.twitter.com/slmpd. Yes, it is our official page despite the fact that you do not see the “verified” sign. Apparently Twitter is still working on that, so let’s hope it is there soon. Law enforcement agencies can be notoriously old fashioned. If you know someone who’s been a police officer for a while, you’ve probably heard them use the expression “good old fashioned police work.” I’ll never knock that. Good old fashioned police work has caught some notorious criminals. Yet there are things that we can incorporate that can help us to connect to you. This Twitter page is one of them.

We’re still deciding how best to use the department’s Twitter but here is what we do know. The “tweets” are being posted by our staff that work with the media. Sometimes they will tweet things they think are important, many other times they will tweet things that I’ve asked them to talk about. When there are major traffic issues, the department’s Twitter page will mention them. Officers will also be asking that you help us to identify suspects from surveillance cameras so you can expect to see those tweets. To have exposure to such a broad audience will allow you to help us to make arrests more quickly. We will also tweet department announcements and news. However, there are also some things that you might not see on our page. As much as we would like to tweet very specific details about criminal incidents, there will be many times that we can’t. It’s not that we don’t want to tell you, it’s because we want to see criminals be convicted. Sometimes people focus so heavily on the arrest, they forget the other key part of the equation is the conviction. There are court rules regarding pre-trial publicity. The last thing we want to do is jeopardize any aspect of a criminal case because of something we’ve said on Twitter. So if you don’t see detailed information about certain crimes, that is why.

While I’m on the topic of technology, check out the Nixle service as well. The service allows us to send messages directly to your email account about criminal incidents, traffic incidents and community meetings. Go to the bottom of our homepage, www.slmpd.org and click on the Nixle link.