Late in the afternoon before the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Officer Drew Fennelly sat down at his console, racking his brains over what to tweet.
The public affairs cop does his best to update the Lawrence, Kansas, Police Department’s Twitter account once a day. The only topic that came to mind, however, was that night’s political dustup, which was set to kick off in three hours.
Inspiration hit, and a legendary tweet was born:
Within minutes he could see that his latest tweet would be very big. Emails began pouring in; RTs were stacking up. His post would eventually be retweeted and “liked” by 71,000 people as of Sept. 30. Papers as distant as The Boston Globe and the U.K.’s Independent published stories. TV comedians wisecracked about the tweet.
“I never thought that I would put out a tweet that would be on national news broadcasts, on Jimmy Kimmel and reaching people all over the country and all over the world,” Fennelly said.
Though thousands of cop shops around the country have Twitter feeds with crime updates and links to press releases, police in the Kansas town of 97,000 offer a surprisingly light touch. The goal is not just to tweet about public safety (though there is that), but to interact and build relationships with the public.
This is all the more important at a time when police nationwide are the subject of protests and diminished community trust.
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“The whole reason we started the Twitter account was to reach out and engage with the community and basically be part of the conversation,” Fennelly says, adding. “It’s huge to be a national news story—and not have it be for a bad reason—when you work in the police business.”
Fennelly followed up the 911 tweet with a warning about politics-fueled inebriation. It garnered 5,300 RTs and “likes”—another home run by any standard.
Angry voters?
Did the tweets touch on something in the zeitgeist, the sense that this election has turned otherwise rational voters into frothing maniacs? Some news outlets seemed to assume so.
“Presumably referencing recent calls made to the precinct, the post has already been retweeted over 20,000 times by angry debate viewers,” the Independent stated.
Just to be clear, Fennelly posted the 911 message hours before the debate, so nobody had called 911 to complain they were assaulted by the assertions from either nominee. It was just an attempt to add the department’s voice on the topic of the day.
The drinking game tweet, however, had a basis in reality. Public-minded denizens of Lawrence have come up with a pastime in which they slug down spirits while watching city commission meetings on the internet. Though this surely leavens the tedium of the reading of the minutes, police frown on the practice.
“I didn’t want to encourage people to participate in drinking games,” Fennelly says, “because binge drinking is not safe, and it leads to a lot of problems that we see on patrol.”
Fennelly has also managed to bring a sense of humor to more serious public safety announcements, such as one about telephone fraud.
“If you get a call from 206-259-5743 it is a scam,” Lawrence police offered over the course of two tweets. “Don't give them any information. We called them a couple times, but they keep ... hanging up as soon as we say ‘Hi, I'm Officer...’”
More serious tweets.
Drunken driving is no joke, and a tweet about driver stops contained no frivolity—although the message was clear and direct.
From the adroitness of its Twitter feed, you might assume Lawrence Police are old pros. In fact, the department opened its account in December, and Fennelly admits it took time to find the right tone.
“Just like any brand that starts a social media account, you really have to know what your voice is going to be,” he says.
In adapting that voice, Fennelly was inspired by a tweet from Kansas City, Missouri, during a wild card playoff game pitting the hometown Royals against the Oakland Athletics in 2014. The KC cops pleaded, “We really need everyone to not commit crimes and drive safely right now. We'd like to hear the Royals clinch.” The result: 40,000 “likes” and RTs.
Fennelly recalls thinking: “Wow. This is really good. They’re connecting with people on a level that’s not normal for a police department.”
Before his debate tweet, Fennelly’s biggest hit was fired off in despair after Villanova beat top-seeded University of Kansas during the NCAA Tournament in March. Like many in Lawrence, Fennelly is a Kansas fan (he attended the university). He decided to share his grief with the department’s followers.
Somewhat nervously (you never know what’s going to offend somebody), Fennelly gambled with this tweet:
The result was record engagement and stories in USA Today and Fox Sports. In a story on the tweet, Fox reported, “Jayhawks fans no doubt felt they were robbed. Or jilted. Or victims of some sort of crime, as Kansas was the favorite to win the title. Someone needed to pay.”
Fennelly says he is lucky his supervisors and department administration afford him the latitude to tweet in a lighter fashion. Co-workers, however, were skeptical at first, asking why he was taking that tone. Yet they, too, have come around.
“They’ve seen the results that we had so far,” Fennelly says. “They’ve seen how the perception that’s created in social media can start to shape the narrative about our police department.”
Since the debate night success, Fennelly says, people keep asking him for his secret recipe for a viral tweet. Sorry to say, he isn’t much help.
“The answer is, ‘I have absolutely no idea,” Fennelly says. “I put out a lot of tweets that I think are hilarious and I think are great, and they just bomb.”
@byworking
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