The police officer who’s a social media star
Officer ‘Pete the Tweet’ uses social media to connect with community, writes Mark Blevis.
Constable Peter McKenna has cracked the code of Sir Robert Peel’s “that the police are the public and that the public are the police” and reinvented the legacy neighbourhood beat cop in the age of social media. His skilful use of Twitter has made him a phenomenal ambassador for the service, a distinction that has earned him the nickname “Pete the Tweet.”
McKenna began his social media journey with a Facebook account. That’s where he posted photos taken during family vacations and a photo of himself and his children in Star Wars gear, ready for Halloween. Facebook made sense to him. Twitter, with its character limit and bird imagery, seemed infantile at the time. Still, he listened when his colleagues said they were personally engaged on the platform. They found it to be a critical and timely information source, particularly during world events. He reconsidered.
It was the famous Highway 174 sink hole of September 2012 that motivated McKenna to become a trailblazer for the police service. He wrote, held on to, and eventually sent an email to then-Superintendent Jill Skinner about the value of Twitter for community engagement and information sharing. A few days later, Pete the Tweet became the first Ottawa Constable to be armed with an official-issue Blackberry as part of his uniform.
McKenna received then-common training, which went like this: “Here’s Twitter. Here’s how you tweet. Here’s where you put your name. And, don’t say anything dumb.”
McKenna noted at the time that many tweeting police brass were sharing updates about meetings they were attending, people they met and speeches they delivered. Though he admits his own start was a bit stiff, McKenna knew he could use Twitter to achieve so much more.
Since then, he’s used Twitter with amazing effect.
McKenna is an example to follow not because he uses Twitter but why and how.
“Social media is like the great equalizer. You can directly reach out to virtually any person of authority or significance and often times there will be some sort of dialogue.”
McKenna has hosted a number of “live Twitter feeds,” giving the public front row seats to learn about police operations, equipment and the officers who keep our city safe. He’s brought us into the 911 Communications Centre through tweets about silly calls, dangerous calls and sad calls.
He’s taken us on virtual ridealongs, sharing the contents of his motorcycle saddle bags (resulting in a lively exchange about sunscreen SPF ratings) and tweeting about traffic stops including “Young fellow in well worn farm pick-up pulled over for speeding-delighted when (we) approached to hear he had Celine Dion cranked on the radio.” Then later that same evening a sober sharing of a “check on conditions of a person” call in which McKenna and his partner discovered a woman had died in her home. All part of the job.
It’s this mix of work and pleasure that has helped build a rapport between McKenna and his online following. He’s shortening the distance between the public and the police, often leading to citizens tweeting police-related questions to him rather than calling the service. McKenna sees this as a significant victory for the public-police relationship for non-emergency calls.
The nature of his online relationships became particularly clear on Oct. 22, 2014. McKenna was among the many officers who responded to the shooting downtown. While searching a government building with his team, he noticed that his phone was constantly buzzing. At his first opportunity for a break, he discovered that 59 of his followers had tweeted their good wishes and appreciation to McKenna and his colleagues. You could almost feel the collective exhale when McKenna tweeted “First chance at a break today. It has been a long day but we will keep going,” at 5 p.m.
The following day, sensing children might be struggling to understand the downtown shooting, much as adults were, McKenna tweeted “Hi Kids! Have a great day at school. We’ll keep you safe. If you have questions about things you hear, talk to your mom or dad.”
It’s not an easy time to be a police officer. Events reported in the media and suspicions about a police state have driven a wedge between some members of the public and police officers. It’s a wedge that’s widened by smartphones extended to document police activities. McKenna notes that the resulting videos sometimes lack context (such as, the events leading up to an arrest) and that fast-travelling first reports are often perceived to be the most truthful — which is not always the case.
“This is why the police need to be involved in the online conversation,” McKenna notes.
The Ottawa Police Service has certainly embraced this philosophy. Today you’ll find the Twitter accounts of officers working in the Marine Dive Trails unit, Criminal Investigations Unit and Collison Investigations Unit, among others. Many take a page out of McKenna’s Twitter playbook: use your real name and photo (“people want to talk to a name, not a unit”) and inflect your Twitter stream with your personality and relatable elements of your personal life.
McKenna has set a great example and the Ottawa Police Service has invested heavily in helping its officers strive for success online. Corporate Communications now oversees an in-depth social media training program which includes one-on-one sessions with subjectmatter experts, bi-weekly updates on best practices and trends, suggested topics and how to avoid the mistakes that are making headlines.
Constable McKenna has humanized the digital touch, and our city is a better place for it.
Follow Constable Pete McKenna on Twitter at @OfficerMcKenna. And, follow his #OPSlive live Twitter feeds.
Mark Blevis is a digital public affairs strategist with DigitalPublicAffairs.com, and the co-author of TOUCH: Five Factors to Growing and Leading a Human Organization (Dundurn, 2014). This is the first in an occasional series about how people in Ottawa use social media.
Social media is like the great equalizer. You can directly reach out to virtually any person of authority or significance and often times there will be some sort of dialogue.