Many law enforcement officers who encounter social media on a personal level tend to run the other direction. Sure, they use sites like Facebook to research suspects, but what’s the point of participating on a department level?

It’s a question Christa Miller hears all too often. She’s spent the past year and a half researching and blogging about just that. With the tagline “branding police work via social media,” her blog Cops 2.0 answers many questions about the hows and whys of social media.

Miller, who has covered the LEO sector as a trade journalist for nearly decade, works together on the blog with Scott White, a Virginia police officer and marketing strategist. She created Cops 2.0 to help LE officers and administrators navigate social media as a potentially powerful community relations tool.

How did you get involved in the 2.0 world?

I have been talking to people online since 1993, when I got into college and discovered my first listserv in the campus computer clusters. It was an X-Files fan community. From there I joined listservs for writers then moved to bulletin boards and from there to blogs.

I’ve belonged to communities devoted to first-time novelists, crime fiction authors, law enforcement officers and moms. But it wasn’t until I went full-time with my PR business that I joined Twitter and Facebook and the rest.

How is social media changing the law enforcement community?

I am not sure that it is, quite yet. Law enforcement is arguably the most change-resistant population out there!

I think social media has had its biggest impact on public safety and criminal activity in that as with so many other things, LE is not prepared for what their constituents are doing with it. Witness the problems with flash mobs and the fact that many agencies (or government IT departments) are still blocking social sites, although anecdotally I think more and more ARE using them to investigate crimes.

I do think, however, that a lot more can be done using social media, and also taking from social media culture to apply toward law enforcement. It might take another generation or two or five, but I’m not sure constituents will expect anything less.

Most people are completely overwhelmed by the exhaustive social networking options out there. If someone’s a social media novice, where’s the best place to start? Where should they not start?

The best place to start is to back away from all those tools and take time to think about what you (and your community) need. Research how social media are in use in the community. Which bloggers seem to have a good handle on local and regional events? Ask what their readership is. And consider whether other people in your community use social networking for staying in touch with family/friends, for business networking, to get their news, just for entertainment.

After that, figure out what your communications needs are. What do you most want people to know about — crime stats? Specific crime problems? Crime prevention? Those issues will drive how you use tools.

You also need to figure out who’s going to be handling this stuff: one person or a mix? A team approach can help. Is there someone gifted at writing or photography, or even with an interest in video production? See if they’re willing to devote some time to figure out how to put good department- or law enforcement-related content online.

What’s the secret to social media? Or is there one?

The secret is that there is no secret. It’s about being out there among people. People like me who are very introverted and even shy in crowds have found a voice online.

I think for some, it does come more naturally than to others. And I do think law enforcement officers approach it differently. They are used to thinking tactically, not taking people at face value, and trusting “half of what you see, and nothing of what you hear.” In some ways, they’re actually better equipped than the general public to be online! But in others, “just conversing” is not an easy thing for them.

And what’s something a LEO should *never* do online?

Actually … we live in a world where offline very quickly becomes online. Think about the Oscar Grant shooting. So the best thing officers can do is live and breathe their agency’s code of conduct, on or off duty. Yes, it’s a tough job, you do need to blow off steam, and the public can never understand what you do.

But, the public also has been conditioned to believe what they see — not half of it, ALL of it. Cops are always complaining about how the public can’t take responsibility for themselves. But they’ll also have a harder time taking LE seriously if they’re always seeing “stupid cop tricks” in the media, about the latest officer firing for a YouTube video or Facebook posting.

Now that you’ve heard Miller’s take, let us know how you feel about LEO participation in social media. What ways have you seen departments take advantage of sites like Facebook and Twitter?