How can police use social media to help the public?

A community blog would be a great idea, letting the public have a peek behind the scenes (appropriately) or in the mind of an officer, and facilitating a conversation between the officers and the public. A blog is very easy to set up and once a policy regarding posts being approved prior to displaying is established, there is relatively little risk and potentially lots of rewards. You could include a page with resources, phone numbers to call etc, that would be beneficial to the public.

Facebook or any photo-posting site to tell the locals to be on the lookout for certain individuals who have committed a crime, or pictures of children who are missing, or photos of stolen cars, lost pets, etc.

Finnish police force has done the same. They have people who contribute to the online community, for example IRC Gallery (irc-galleria.net).

It’s enough that they just are there. Ready to be talked to. It is beneficial that people know who they are and know they are there as policemen, and you can go chat with them.

Our local newspaper partnered with law enforcement to publish interactive crime maps on line with a mechinism to report crimes on line.

Twitter is an obvious one, it doesn’t rely on people logging onto a site to get news updates.

facebook pages with communities most wanted pics, warnings of prevalent Internet scams, identity theft info etc.
Place to report non emergency complaints like grafitti, (Maybe even post pictures.)

Hi everyone, thanks for your responses. I basically pointed them to this page in my reply. Unfortunately, I don’t think they quite “got it”. I think their initial enthusiasm has waned as they realized that this takes a lot of commitment. Hopefully, they push on and atleast provide a presence online. I would like to be able to friend my police :)