Good morning, Hopefully everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. I had some down time during the early hours of the day, and thought Id share a few things in regards to public relations. As you are very well aware, all too often law enforcement officers deal with negativity. I jokingly tell people that we get lied to for a living, and we often deal with the worst people on their worst days, to sum it up. On the other hand, good things DO happen in this job. This does not apply to all of the media (many local reporters do a wonderful job of covering all aspects) but for the most part, the national media does concentrate on the negative part of our job for whatever reason. In all fairness, a lot of our job is negative in nature, but on the other hand, the good things do not get reported enough (in my opinion). I have had many conversations with other LEOs and we feel that that type of constant negativity AKA cop-bashing certainly does not help w/ community relations. Much of this takes place on the internet. Im sure youve all read it online...things posted by private citizens and also some websites. Too much one-sided / negative reporting can lead to tension between the police and those whom we serve. That is one of the reasons why I spend time posting things on our MPD FB site, and that is why we have officers like Sgt Saintenoy speaking to kids at the schools and to certain groups when requested. We try to combat the negativity with positive things. Some children only see a police officer when he/she is taking one of their family members to jail. Thats not good. An example of a positive thing would be when Target helps us every year with the National Night Out which gives us a chance to meet and greet with the kids and the general public. The feedback is usually very positive w/ things like that, so it seems to be well worth the effort. I will say that I have noticed an increase in the reporting of the positive things by the national media that law enforcement officers do. Hopefully, this continues. Some of our local reporters in Stark County and NE Ohio do an awesome job of reporting both sides, I must say. In addition, another thing I notice is the amount of misinformation out there. People repeat mistruths they hear and/or saw on TV about law enforcement. The next thing you know, its true in peoples minds. Perception becomes reality in this job. I try to post educational things on our website when time allows to get the truth out there. Such things as simple as traffic laws, what to do & not do when stopped by a police officer, OVI laws, etc. Ive always thought that not only is education important, its important for all of us to educate others. If you learned something that you know to be a fact, pass that information onto others. I would love to see the law enforcement community as a whole take on a bigger role in educating the public. If the public understands WHY we do WHAT we do, I would suspect that would diminish some of the tension and negativity out there, and I think we can all benefit from that. After all, we are all in this together. My two pennies... Sgt B Muntean
Posted on: Sat, 29 Nov 2014 12:55:07 +0000
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