West Edmonton police officer tweets from the streets

By Pamela Di Pinto

EDMONTON – Const. Brendan  Power of the Edmonton Police Service’s West Division is one of over 1,500 police officers committed to keeping the city safe. The only difference between him and most other officers is that he gets to tell the world about it, via Twitter.

For Power – along with Const. Adam Kube of Southwest Division and Const. Coral Spiker of Southeast Division – being on duty also means being on Twitter. This means hitting the streets with his Blackberry in hand and posting updates about what he encounters during the day.

“A lot of people aren’t just going to approach me and ask me questions or comment on what we’re doing,” said Power. “So, this is kind of a faceless, informal way for us to interact with people.”

Getting the conversation started

Officers began tweeting from the front lines in late 2009 in what Hans Larsen, a marketing analyst with the EPS recruiting unit, said originally started out as a recruiting initiative to let job-seekers know what it’s like to be an officer.

“We were wanting a way to have interested applicants know more about what an officer does,” Larsen said. “So, we thought it would be a good idea to have a few officers sending out updates throughout their day.”

Today, Larsen said the majority of their Twitter followers are members of the general public who simply enjoy seeing the city through the eyes of a police officer, even if it’s just for 140 characters.

“It allows citizens to know what’s happening in their city, and it allows a place for citizens to ask questions and interact with the officers,” said Larsen.

First of its kind

Other cities have come close to replicating Edmonton’s model. In Vancouver, police recently did a one-time “Tweet-A-Long” and Toronto police have a traffic safety officer who tweets regularly.

Larsen said Edmonton’s Twitter presence is different however, because the officers engage the public in conversation, where in other cities they only have one feed dedicated to pumping out news releases and announcements.

“[Our officers] have lots of followers, but more importantly, they have lot’s of interaction with retweets and lots of exchanges with their followers,” he said.

Tweeting from the front lines

Like his colleagues, Power tweets on a voluntary basis. He signed on for the job – and to Twitter for the first time – about a year after the initiative started up as a way to connect more with the public.

“I like interacting with people,” he said.

There are guidelines the officers have to follow while tweeting, particularly no mention of names or locations – outside of traffic calls – that would associate a person with a specific incident. But otherwise, they are free to say what they want.

Personally, Power said he likes to tweet about the calls that stand out in his day, especially those that show the lighter side of his job.

“Our job isn’t always serious,” he said. “We run into a lot of weird and funny stuff, so I just like to get that kind of information out there if I can.”

Putting a face to EPS

On top of giving people a good laugh, Power said he spends his time on Twitter keeping up a one-on-one interaction with followers as it adds a human aspect to policing.

Avid Twitter user Mack Male said this human aspect is the backbone of all social media.

“Whenever I do a social media talk or something like that, I tell people that social media really is about people and relationships between people, not about technology,” he said.

Male is a self-proclaimed techno-geek and “social media guy” who works as a computer programmer by day and Edmonton blogger by night. He was the first person in Edmonton and the 985th person in the world to be on Twitter.

He commends EPS for putting a face to their organization with Power and his fellow tweeting officers.

“They’re real people that you feel like you can interact with and you could have a conversation with,” Male said. “So, when they post an update about something they’re doing, you know that it’s coming from a real person.”

Power agreed the service does add a human touch.

“We’re not robots. We’re not just a uniform,” he said. “We are regular people.”

Follow Const. Power on Twitter at @CstPower.