Apparently it is not only regular folks like us use Facebook. Do you know, that even police department has established their own group and developed Facebook application there.

I first came across about it when I stumbled upon news on how Greater Manchester Police (GMP) has created their own Facebook application for the purpose of combating crime. It’ll publish police news and at the same time to report appeal for information (through form) for any lead to unresolved crime.

Another police related Facebook application that I came across is, Toronto Police News release, which publishes police news around Toronto, Canada.

I have both Facebook applications installed in my Facebook to sneak in what is inside. Not bad, considering the high load task that policemen has, they have leveraged the latest craze on social media to spread their news and at the same time gathering back info from millions of Facebook’s users.

Other than that application, there are 7 police departments page available in Facebook, with the most fans to be Vancouver Police Department. However, it serves mostly for recruitment purpose and publishing police news.

There are a lot of groups and individuals in Facebook with the police on it’s name or profile, so it’s kinda hard to find the legitimate one.

This is the interesting part. How effective is crime prevention/investigation using Facebook? No one is sure about that, but I found one Facebook group called WANTED BY POLICE that has the group closed after the case is resolved. And there are articles on how Facebook solved crime (directly or indirectly) in Georgetown and London .

After all, this shows that social media website is not the only place to get socialized, get around with friends and have fun and etc. Depending on the creativity, there are a lot beneficial things that can be obtained there. My advice, use it wisely!

On unrelated development, GMP has its own channel on Youtube too. Their police department seems to be very active on social media. I’m wondering if our PDRM has the same intention too. And hopefully, it is not politically motivated.

Source
BBC, ITWorld