PC 1312 Joe Lloyd, Beacon Officer for the Oakham and
Barleythorpe Safer Neighbourhood Team and the officer
behind the @OakhamPolice twitter account, is celebrating
the 2000th follower to the account.
Leicestershire Police have a strong social media presence
including 25 facebook accounts, and over 90 twitter accounts
with a combined following of over 170,000.
The accounts cover a broad range of areas of police business
including neighbourhood policing, traffic, air support, and even
police dog Drake has an account with over 2000 followers!
The @OakhamPolice account has one of the largest number of
followers of all of the neighbourhood police accounts in Leicestershire
and at the time of writing has 2030 followers. PC Lloyd said;
“I have found that social media, in particular twitter has become
an effective tool to help communicate with the local community as
well as finding out information from other police forces about new
ways of working.
“About two years ago we had about 500 followers and it has been
great to see the account grow to where it is now. I pride myself on
engaging with the followers and I answer queries and where necessary
challenge attitudes.
“Twitter does not replace conventional out on the streets policing,
and I am often able to provide updates as I go about my day to day work.
“After I had achieved 500 followers it was near Christmas, and I made a
challenge to social media users to help us get to 750 followers.
I said that if it was achieved I would dress as Santa Claus for the day
and at the time PCSO (now PC) Jay COOPER agreed to dress as an Elf!
"The Chief Constable saw our tweets and helped us achieve our
goal and I dressed as Santa and went to a local school for children
with disabilities and became their Santa. I have now made this a
regular event for the school and others, which I find extremely
rewarding and emotional.”
The police at Rutland have a facebook page and four twitter accounts.
You can find more information about them by visiting these links;
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/rutlandpolice
Inspector Lou Cordiner: http://www.twitter.com/rutlandlpu
Oakham and Barleythorpe Police: http://www.twitter.com/OakhamPolice
Rutland North and Rutland South http://www.twitter.com/RutlandPolice
Uppingham Police http://www.twitter.com/UppinghamPolice
I have 2177 catch me if you can PC Lloyd!! :-)
