Serving, Protecting, and Posting

Have you found the Marco Island Police Department’s Facebook posts a lot more engaging lately? If so, you’re not alone.

"This morning we just hit the million view mark for 28 days,” said Christian Davies, MIPD’s new public information officer. "And that's from 228,000 people. We have multiple viewers, but we have 228,000 people looking at our page on a consistent basis.”

Davies’ boss, interim police chief Joe Belardo, 57, couldn’t be happier with his baby-faced officer—even if he thought he was a teenager the first time he saw him.

"I thought he was a kid the first time I met him,” Belardo said. "I said, ‘Somebody left their kid here.’ He always jokes, saying 'I'm not really 12.’ He is young. But in a way that's an advantage when you think about it. I don't think I could run social media at my age the way that he runs it. He knows what works because it's an interest of his to the point where he's a professional. He knows what people want to see. He watches the trends. A lot of people say, ‘Oh, that's not really a police story.’ I think generating interest for people to follow us is important, because when we have information to get out to you, you're already following us because you find us interesting. If you don't find this interesting, you're like, ‘They're boring, they're too vanilla.’ You might have seen that reel they did with the two police cars out in front of 7-Eleven. There was a reason why we did that. It's interesting. People say, 'I'm going to follow those guys because they put out interesting stuff.'”

As Belardo is extolling his virtues, Davies strolls by the doorway. Belardo invites him in to share his story. It turns out Davies' interest in police work started at a very early age.

"I started when I was 13,” Davies said. "I had a little scanner. I rode around on my bicycle and chased around fire trucks. I was very fortunate that when I graduated high school, I got hired in a 911 center a week later. I did that for two and a half years. During my second year of dispatch, the social media coordinator spot for the fire department opened up. They knew what I had been doing with my freelance photography. I have my page that I run with my friends. We have almost a quarter million followers. So social media has always been something I've been passionate about, taking an agency and telling a story. I did that with the fire department. Now I’m taking those principles and applying them here.”

One move MIPD has made has really helped them turn the corner with social media. They changed the department's old policy of keeping comments on their social media posts turned off.

“My goal is to use social media as a tool to interact with the public,” Davies said. "If we can't hear what they think because our comments are off, we're not doing ourselves any favors.”

Of course, when people are able to comment on the department’s posts, that means there’s more content to stay on top of.

“Yes,” Davies said, “and you'll see that I do respond to people. My goal is to prevent misinformation. I'm not going to interact with somebody who's just making negative comments. I call that chronically living on Facebook. That's my terminology. Because some people live on Facebook and comment all day long. It doesn't matter who you're talking to. But I would say 95 percent of the posts are positive, probably closer to 99 percent."

Initially, Belardo doubted the idea would work.

"I'm shocked because I really didn't know,” Belardo said. "I guess it was always sort of our practice to leave the comments off. I think that we've realized that it's like Christian said, having those comments on has been important, and we've gotten a lot of positive feedback. I've been to a couple of different events on the island, and people have actually commented about how much they've liked the fact that the comments are on. They say it feels more transparent and I can't agree more. I've gotta admit that I was naive about it. Christian's educated me about how important this is. It's not an afterthought for us anymore. It's just been great. People are able to interact with us."

One of Davies’ ideas is a feature called Wednesdays with Will that follows officer Will Prigge as he pulls over speeders.

"That one got a lot of reaction,” Davies said.

“We want to be responsive to the needs of the community,” Belardo said. "That's what we mean by responsiveness. That's the community letting us know what they want. It's been a huge tool for us to figure out in nearly real time what the community wants. I was sitting in the council meeting when the gentleman mentioned about the traffic circle. I had my computer and I sent an email. 'Let’s get some people down to that traffic circle.’ Christian took the ball and ran with it and said, ‘Let's make this a regular thing where people interact with us back and forth.’"

“My personal opinion is that the role of local government is to stay in touch with the community,” Davies said. “Take the traffic circle at Yellowbird. That was a big topic during the council meeting. I went out the next morning with the traffic unit. The next morning we had multiple officers there and took pictures of it, made a post and said, ‘This is what we're doing. Where else in the city do you want to see us?' We had hundreds of people telling us where to go. We went to those places."

Of course Belardo deserves credit for giving his young star the ability to shine.

"I can't say enough good about Christian,” Belardo said. "He’s brought a lot of awareness with his work. He's educated me, an old salty cop who's been doing this job for 36 years. I've learned how this is a great tool for us. The response has been nothing but positive by all kinds of different people. I've kind of given him free rein. I told him, ‘You're the expert, all I'm going to do is slow you down.’ I'm happy with what he's doing."

Davies appreciates having a chief that gives him that freedom.

"I mean, it's excellent,” Davies said. "I was blessed to come in at a time when leadership transitions were occurring. I've felt nothing but support from all the command staff here. Not only the command staff, but the officers. I have officers on a daily basis sending me pictures out in the community. I'm one person. Some agencies have 10 or 15 communications people. They're at the point now where they want to get involved. I know some of the officers here were skeptical at first. They're like, ‘Who is this 12-year-old?’ I'm very young in the realm of public information officers, there's no getting around it. But at the same time I have a good feel for what works on social media and what doesn't. And I'm thankful that I have a chief that has allowed me to run with it."