Local Police Making Waves on Social Media

Local law enforcement agencies across the country have been experiencing a big push toward social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Recently the movement caught up with The Baltimore City Police Department, which reneged on a policy change that would have restricted certain tweets.

The department initially stated that it would no longer transmit information on all shooting incidents. On Monday, Jack Papp, chief spokesman of the department, initially told The Baltimore Sun that the department considered making the change in order to prevent spreading misinformation.

Anne Arundel County Police Department has also been active on Twitter and Facebook. Police Chief Kevin Davis regularly tweets about his daily activities online, and the department's Twitter account posts about local crime activities.

Davis called Twitter "a great opportunity for me to show transparency."

This week, the department was listed as the eighth most popular law enforcement agency in the country on Facebook,  in a category among the largest agencies in the country. The survey was conducted by the International Association of Police Chiefs.

Public Information Officer Justin Mulcahy said the department began looking into social media avenues in 2009, but with the addition of T.J. Smith to the department, things have ramped up, Mulcahy said.

"The ability to communicate what a day looks like for them and to humanize them not as figureheads, but as real people, that's one element of it," Smith said of the recent social media push. "But there are also incidents like today, where we showed our K-9 dog and his handler getting a gun off a suspect. It's nice to put a face to that."

Mulcahy said for incidents like an active shooter, the department is looking toward how other, larger agencies are treating them.

"We're still in an evolving stage of doing live tweeting," he said. "We would love to get timely information out, but the important thing is to get accurate information out."

You can follow Anne Arundel County Police Department's Twitter at @AACOPD and Chief Kevin Davis at @chiefkevindavis.

Patch Senior Field Editor Bryan Sears contributed to this article.