The article listed the benefit of using social media, the different adaptations of diffusion of innovation across multiple police departments, and the various methods police departments chose to employ. In general, the article (Hu, Rodgers, Lovrich, 2018) gave a thorough study and analysis of how the U.S. police departments adopted social media as a new tool to communicate with the public, which I believe is becoming more crucial than ever in today’s society. 

Following the 2020 BLM protest and the demand to defund the police, we have seen a rise of distrust and hatred toward the police force. Much distrust and hatred are generated by the misunderstanding and the lack of acknowledgment of the difficulty police work. The lack of communication between the police and the public caused such misunderstanding. Using social media as a tool to create that communication is a start. The article has provided us with four types of social images that police departments can project on social media: the crime fighter, traditional cop, public-relations facilitator, and mixer. Of the four of them, I believe that the image of Traditional Cop is more useful to win back the public’s trust. The public and the police department need to realize that they are both parts of the same community, not one against the other. The police need first to recognize that police work cannot process smoothly without public support (Peel, 2008). And to win public support, police departments need to be more transparent in their department policy, explain why certain procedures are formed the way it is, demonstrate, and educate the public about the nature of police work (which most civilians do not understand). Thus, police need to rebuild their image as community protectors and demonstrate their involvement in the community, especially amount the youngster, which can be done via social media.

The article also points out that police departments’ lack of adaptation to utilize new technology due to their constrained resources (Roger, 2003), which I believe is relevant to the recent debate of defunding the police. The idea of defunding the police is to reallocate the supposed overinvested police budget to provide other public services such as housing and mental health to marginalized communities. By doing so, the city can reduce police misconduct (Lum, Koper, Wu, 2021). This idea is based on the assumption that police departments generally have more resources than they need, which is invalid. An investigation on the Chicago Police, conducted by the Department of Justice, shows that the CPD’s failure to select and train its officers properly is the direct cause for police misconduct, and the reason being of such failure is the lack of funding for training facilities and materials (Rushin, Michalski, 2020). This report by the DOJ demonstrates that defunding the police will not reduce but increase police misconduct.  Police departments can reduce police misconduct if they have the resources to train their officers properly on the use of force and understand the law. And with more resources, police departments across the U.S. can then incorporate social media as part of the training program available for young officers who are adequate with social media, thus creating better communication between the police and the public.

Second post:

In the article “We Are More Than Crime Fighters” authors Hu, Rodgers, and Lovrich studied and analyzed 14 popular United States police departments Facebook pages and how they approach their social media pages and for what the purpose. They studied and analyzed posts made by the police departments within one year, then categorized the police departments into 5 theme and 24 subthemes. The categories and subcategories they assigned the police departments to all depended on the police departments’ approach in their posts. The five main themes the police departments were assigned to were: crime fighter, traditional cop, public relations facilitator, and mixer. The crime fighter social image (only seen in the Philadelphia police department) entails portraying to the public that the police department is in fact fighting back against crime. (Hu, Rodgers, and Lovrich, 2018) The traditional cop social image portrayed the image that not only were they primarily focused on crime fighting and control but also trying to establish a good relationship within the community they served. (Hu, Rodgers, and Lovrich, 2018) The public-relations facilitator social image focused mainly on leading a community-oriented policing. (Hu, Rodgers, and Lovrich, 2018) This is seen on the NYPD’s social media pages. The mixer social image did not have any main focus when approaching their social media posts, but instead tried to balance their social image by posting all types of content to maintain a professional image of an up-to-date and competent police department. (Hu, Rodgers, and Lovrich, 2018) This establishes how United States police departments vary in their approach to policing. As seen in the NYC criminal justice system the NYPD has in recent years taken a more community-policing approach as opposed to Philadelphia’s crime fighting and control approach. As stated by Hu, Rodgers, and Lovrich, these social images United States police departments portray on their social media definitely has the intended impact on their communities. In my opinion, the United States should require all police departments to have a social media presence to relay important routine information to their communities. This will provide a free and accessible way for citizens to see how their respective police departments are approaching their policing style. Police departments should also have a designated individual who is in charge of posting on their pages to make it a routine of reaching out to the public. With the routinization of posting on their social media pages police departments will only become more tech-savvy which would only help in the long run. (Hu, Rodgers, and Lovrich, 2018) I agree with Hu, Rodgers, and Lovrich that it is important United States police departments adopt a social media presence in order to help community-relations, portray crime fighting/control image, and keep citizens up-to-date with solved/unsolved cases, especially since it also helps the police departments in solving said cases.