Commanders of the New York Police Department (NYPD) have been attending Twitter School since May of this year. The purpose of this program is to teach law enforcers how to better communicate with people through social media, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Classes on how to operate the department's Twitter accounts are being conducted at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan.
The lectures teach commanders how to construct posts that will elicit positive reactions from their followers. For instance, the department's social media team told the officers that tweets featuring "dad humor" is likely to get more hits.
Also, using hashtags and posts about animal rescues are effective ways of gaining the attention of followers.
"A lot of people seem to like when you post kittens or dogs," Detective Jeff Thompson, one of the class' participants commented.
To avoid getting negative responses, the officers were told not to use military time or seem too rigid or insensitive in their posts. In addition, lead trainer Martha Norrick advised the class not to fall for scams, Fox News reported.
"If a Nigerian prince contacts you on Twitter, please do not engage," she told the commanders.
To give an example of a good post, Norrick showed the class a tweet from a police precinct in San Francisco.
"Officers just arrested a naked man in the bison paddock in GG Park. The bison seemed unimpressed," the post read.
"It is the perfect kind of funny," she explained. This naked man is not named, we are not sharing a photo of him. Do not share photos of naked men on Twitter."
Previously, the NYPD only had one official account which is the @NYPDnews. This is monitored by the department's media relations team.
But now, the NYPD's number of social media accounts has grown to 40, according to Digital Trends. Deputy Commissioner Zachary Tumin is planning to set up more accounts by connecting every police precinct and public housing patrol unit in the city to online social media.