police policy
Joseph L. Keyes
CJUS 520-D09 LUO
Carl M. Miedich, PsyD
21Apr2018
Law enforcement organizations regulate the use of social media by developing policies which will regulate the use by employees to educate them on the proper use of social media and the abuses. Law enforcement organizations should regulate individual officer’s social media activity so as to ensure the officer does not share sensitive information or secrets of the organization in any case.
There are various best practices on the regulation of police officers’ use of social media. These include the community outreach and information. The specific practices here are enhancing communication through social media and also encouraging transparency. Employees who wish to have social media accounts which also benefit the organization are allowed to do so. Crime prevention is also enhanced through social media, and criminal investigation. The rights of individuals and their privacy are also protected well (Barker, 2010). The training of law enforcement officers to ensure that individuals’ rights are protected is also another best practice. When law enforcement officers receive adequate training, they will get to know individuals’ rights to use of social media, and their freedoms and limitations to its use.
Practices such as use of social media for intelligence development are also beneficial to the organization. Other functions include analytic assessments and situational awareness reports. A good social media policy will define and outline the acceptable practices regarding the use of social media. Also the information to be hidden and that to be shared. Use of social media in the law enforcement organization will be done with strictly following the laws set by this policy (Barker, 2010). Fakhoury, a law enforcement officer in an interview said that “people post without realizing the consequences, and any change to preserve privacy has to start with greater awareness of users.”
As the policy manager in our organization, I am developing a social media policy which states applicable laws and limitations to use of social media by the officers. Officers will be allowed to share their personal information on their social media accounts, provided it does not include the daily activities of our organization. When an officer is on official duty, they will not be allowed to post what they are doing at work because this compromises the privacy of the organization. During working hours, no one will be allowed to post anything on social media (Landau, 2012). Posting during working hours means that officers will do less work. These hours are from 8 AM to 4 PM in the evening. Use of smart phones will therefore be prohibited. However, officers will be free to post as soon as they leave work.
Officers are prohibited to post any sexually explicit materials. The employers of law enforcement organizations will not be allowed to post videos or statements which are sexually explicit, as this will compromise the status quo of the whole organization. Defamatory material by any employee is also not allowed (Landau, 2012). When one is recruited in the law organization, any form of discriminatory information will be prohibited such as posting racial comments or posting content which shows the officer is discriminating citizens on basis of their gender or religion. Officers who post such information will be subject to impeachment from office.
The policy will also comply with the Fourth Amendment of the US constitution, “Every person has the right to be free from ‘unreasonable searches and seizures”. This right will also be applicable in my policy as the organization will not interfere with personal social media accounts belonging to officers. Uploading of pictures to personal accounts will be free for individuals (Michaels, 2013). They might also post their activities as they wish, and also several relationships such as posting of kids, partners and relatives. Access to social media is not denied but posting of sensitive information may be questioned because it might reveal sensitive information of the organization. The freedom of speech will be guaranteed for employees but in circumstances when statements are no made in official capacity. When officers are on official duty, they may not be free to post whatever they feel like posting.
Law enforcement personnel will also be free to analyze information posted on social media be it public or private information. Based on Katz test, individuals will not be able to hide any private information posted on social media. This information will be available for anyone to view. However, my organization will only use this information posted only when individuals have committed a crime and investigations are supposed to be done (More, 2014). I will use the 28 CFR Part 23 which states that “any project shall not collect or maintain criminal intelligence information about the political, religious or social views, associations or activities of any individual or group unless such information directly relates to criminal conduct or activity and there is reasonable suspicion that the subject of the information is or may be involved in criminal conduct or activity”.
My officers will not store or retain any information of individuals previously collected for investigations. Any views such as religious and political, belonging to the individuals will be disposed of. I will strictly adhere to community expectations regarding protection of personal information. Although any one would access information on the internet, we will need to adhere to rules regarding privacy of information (Patterson, 2012). Even when new social media are innovated, the basic rules regarding privacy of information will be maintained.
For the case of Melvin C olon who was charged with murder and possession of weapons, the judge was interviewed to give his views. He stated that “Colon’s legitimate expectation of privacy ended when he disseminated posts to his ‘friends’ because those ‘friends’ were free to use his shared information in whichever way they wanted, including sharing with the government.” He posted information on his account showing gang signs and one of his Facebook friends shared it with the government to help in investigations (Patterson, 2012).
In the policy am developing, it will require that officers limit the number of people who can see what they post. This will include activities such as following specific people only. Officers will not be allowed to follow strangers, for example in twitter, or accept friendships from people they do not know in real life. Officers may also view publicly available information on social media sites as this will help them to get to know any criminal activities (Patterson, 2012). The law enforcement organization will also let individuals search information through other protocols. There are several levels of engagement of social media to be followed in the organization.
The overt use level of engagement will be employed in my policy. Information that will be accessed in this level will be free for the general public. Officers are free to search information on social media accounts which do not have privacy settings. The other level of engagement is the discrete use and it will also be used. In this case, identity of officers will not be overly open (Schmalleger, 2010). The covert use level of engagement will be used in cases such as criminal investigation, as the identity of officers will be overly hidden. Officers can create fake social media accounts which hide their identity, for the cases of criminal investigations over social media. This will be done for the purposes of official duty only.
The information obtain social media will also go through evaluation in order to establish certain confidence levels. Evaluation will be done for determining the validity of information obtained from social media. Validation of information may be difficult sometimes because the tips posted might not be sufficient enough to make conclusions. Videos posted on social media will be evaluated well and officers must search for users who uploaded the videos to help provide more information. This will be done by the use of IP addresses of users who posted the videos (Schmalleger, 2010). Personal profiles of users might not bring the right user since most people lie, and my policy will include a detailed investigations of location of crimes. The IP address will be used to search for people who post sensitive information.
Information obtained from social media will be stored up to the time when the case has been resolved. When information has been obtained and criminal investigation completed, it will be disposed of. Information may be stored by the organization when the case is still pending at a court of law. Personal information such as date of birth and names of individuals will be held but concealed by the organization (Schmalleger, 2010). Information obtained will be accompanied by specific reasons as to why it was obtained. Storage periods of information will not exceed ten years whichever the reason as to why it is stored.
During the times when officers will be off-duty and get to their social media accounts such as twitter, they may also come across information which could be used in criminal investigations. Officers are requested to report the information to the organization for further investigations. Information obtained from social media will follow the correct procedures for dissemination.
REFERENCES
Barker, T. (2010). Law enforcement assistance administration (LEAA). In B. S. Fisher & S. P. Lab (Eds.), Encyclopedia of victimology and crime prevention. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. doi:10.4135/978141297993.nr171
Landau, T. (2012). Policing and security in four remote aboriginal communities: A challenge to coercive models of police work. Canadian Journal of Criminology, 38(1), 1–32
Michaels et al (2013). Social work in police departments. Social Work, 18, 67–75. Retrieved from http://www.jstpr.org/stable/23711001
More, H. W. (2014). Police in a free society. In H. W. More (Ed.), Critical issues in law enforcement (4th ed., pp. 1–7). Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing Co.
Schmalleger, F. (2010). Criminal justice: A brief introduction. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.