With the increasing popularity of social media, local police departments are finding more ways to use sites such as Facebook and Twitter to inform residents about crimes occurring in their neighborhoods.

The Champaign Police Department is no exception as Lt. Jim Clark launched a program called #CPDTweetAlong on Feb. 1, when he tweeted about crimes that he responded to during his shift. 

“The idea came across because one of our officers was looking at the social media sites for all other police departments around the country,” Clark said. “So we thought we would try it also.”

Clark said the program was a success as he received an additional 100 followers during his shift using a “Tweetalong” for the first time. 

“I think it went great,” Clark said. “We had very positive comments and people tweeting back, and they liked it.”

When the department first started using Facebook and Twitter last year, Clark said engaging the public in the department’s social media accounts was challenging. He said getting followers and friends and creating content for posts were some of the major challenges the department faced.

The Urbana and University police departments are also using Facebook and Twitter as tools to raise awareness on crimes that occur on campus and its surrounding communities.

Lt. Richard Surles of the Urbana Police Department said he thought social media would attract the public’s attention and inform them about safety-endangering campus crimes instead of having the public seek out the information on the department’s website.

“In order to get the information out on the website, people had to deliberately come to the website and look for the information,” he said. “If I had people follow me on Twitter or like us on Facebook, then I can push the information to them.”

The Urbana Police Department’s Facebook page has 593 likes and 530 followers on Twitter. Surles said page views and followers increased when the Urbana homicide happened last week.

“We had a spike,” he said. “(From) Jan. 30 to Feb. 5, we had 23,051 people (viewing the page)… We are up to about 600 unique views per week.”

The University Police Department also sends public advisories and tweet out important crime alerts through its Illini Alerts account.

Sgt. Joan Fiesta of the University police said these tools are used to reach out to as many people as possible.

“The big part of it is because a lot of people are on Facebook and Twitter,” Fiesta said. “By clicking on Twitter or going to our Facebook page, it just creates a more open environment for (them to come to us.)”

Clark said that police officers are participating in social media efforts because they believe that it is beneficial for the public.

“It’s an information world,” he said. “And I’m just trying to get more information out there to the public about what’s going on with the city of Champaign.”

Carina can be reached at [email protected].