Waterford police go for laughs with Facebook page
Department’s goal is to humanize officers and connect with residents
Waterford — Most police department Facebook pages are straightforward, with posts asking users to help identify suspects, cautioning them about road closures, highlighting charity events and releasing information about arrests.
While police here operate their page in a similar fashion, they do it their own way — often aiming for laughs.
Take, for example, one of the department’s favorite bits: the “preemptive paragraph” meant to anticipate the expected questions from Facebook commenters.
A December post attempting to identify two men who stole about $500 worth of items from Best Buy in Waterford read, “No, no, yes, yes, no. Trying to shorten the preemptive Paragraph. No they are not (the) only store with theft. No they can’t search everyone leaving the store. Yes they are doing something to get people arrested (like calling us), yes there is an LP person at the door and no, they don’t use all our police resources when they call. I gotta learn to cut and paste more!”
Another example, posted the same day, read: “Here we go with our preemptive paragraph to start a larceny post to answer most common questions we see asked. These thefts do not use all police resources. Theft happens in many stores, but some are more aggressive on having offenders arrested. Not every customer can be watched at all times. And for this store, our last post for something like this was October 27th.”
Rather than coming off as too abrasive, the posts garnered 102 and 87 reactions, respectively, with comments such as “I love the preemptive paragraph.”
No, yes, no. Trying to shorten the preemptive paragraph.
No, the department doesn’t mock crimes such as murder or other serious offense, yes, using humor on social media does help the department do its job, and no, none of the officers are standup comedians, though you’d be forgiven for the mistake.
Sgt. Marc Balestracci is the department’s main poster, though other supervisors, and Chief Brett Mahoney, also post. Balestracci said the decision to use humor was a conscious one made in recent years and done with increasing regularity as the jokes landed successfully.
“I took notice of a few other departments, one in Bangor, Maine, and with Guilford PD, that use humor,” Balestracci said. “It worked: You were able to capture different types of audiences, you got a little bit more out of your post, which means it got shared more, got more comments, got more interaction with the public.”
With more than 14,000
“likes” on Facebook, it seems the page is popular. A post celebrating reaching that milestone recognizes as much: “At this rate, we are likely to compete with pages like Cristiano Ronaldo, Shakira or Eminem for Facebook followers!” the post read. “With your support, we have been able to accomplish quite a bit. Together we have identified suspects and solved crimes, spread the word about hazards and built bridges between the Waterford Police Department and the people we serve.”
Balestracci is adamant about community outreach, and he said Mahoney shares his passion.
Despite the jokes, humor helps the police with their dayto-day duties — Balestracci points to a high success rate, somewhere in the area of 70 percent, with identifying suspects, for example.
“Grabbing people’s attention helps us share and spread the words that we need to spread, whether it be a road hazard, a road closure, an identification or we just want to show you a little bit about us,” Balestracci said. “This is just another way for us to try and connect and get people to realize we’re normal people with a very unusual job.”
One of the more acerbic posts is an August 2018 one in which Chief Mahoney published a “handy pictorial” on where Connecticut is in relation to Michigan because so many people from Waterford, Mich., were mistakenly contacting the police in Connecticut’s Waterford and leaving harsh messages.
“Most of the reviews and direct messages contain words like ‘^%%}*’ and ‘@&*€£,’” the post read.
Balestracci said he is careful of being too sarcastic, but the chief doesn’t necessarily have the same concern.
Mahoney also spearheaded an effort to produce a series of videos with Waterford Youth and Family Services meant to advertise a turkey drive. The videos show police chasing and eventually detaining a man in an inflatable turkey costume.
In July of last year, Waterford
police participated in a “lip sync challenge.” The video they put together now has more than 130,000 views on youtube.
The lip sync video is one of Balestracci’s top funny moments from the department. But he said he especially likes self-deprecating humor.
“One of our police officers locked themselves out of their own cruiser,” Balestracci said. “As they’re trying to unlock their car with the tools that we have, I took a picture. Of course, I put it on Facebook. That was probably a year or two ago — the ones where we make fun of ourselves are my favorite.”
Maybe Mahoney will take the hint, in the form of a suggested New Year’s resolution from a post warning against drunken driving on New Year’s Eve: “Convince Chief Mahoney to give a raise to his Facebook people.”