Dallas PD Uses Twitter To Announce Cop Firings

New submitter natarnsco writes "The Dallas, Texas police chief has used an unusual weapon in his arsenal to announce firings and other disciplinary measures in the Dallas police force: Twitter. 'Dallas Police Chief David O. Brown has fired or disciplined 27 officers and employees in the last year. And every time he brings down the hammer, he announces it on Facebook and Twitter, specifying exactly who the men and women are and what they did. On Dec. 30, it was five officers and a 911 call operator.' The article goes on to say, 'Chief Brown is, as far as we know, unique among police chiefs in his use of social media. "I'm unaware of anyone else doing this," says Lt. Max Geron, who handles media relations at the Dallas Police Department. "If we weren't the first, we were one of the first." We checked out the Twitter profiles of various departments around the country as well and couldn't find a similar situation. The social media posts aren't an official policy of the DPD, but rather a "push for transparency" initiative, in Lt. Geron's words. "[It comes from] a desire to be more transparent and to get our message out to the greater community," he says.'"

Comments

Re:Good PR

[drater]

Naw, just good.

Unlikely to last

[ERJ]

Although I do think it is a good thing in that it helps strengthen the community support and trust of the police department I have a feeling that it will end at some point in the near future with a lawsuit....maybe I am just jaded but there is a reason that corporations tend to keep these details silent and have created the (poor in my opinion) rules around providing only the minimal amount of employment information after an employee is let go.

Re:Unlikely to last

[Scutter]

The department isn't a corporation and they are public employees. The time for police to keep things behind closed doors has long since passed.

Re:Unlikely to last

[Scutter]

I'm more concerned with the amount of criminal activity listed in the spreadsheet. These are just the ones that have been caught.

Re:Unlikely to last

[mysidia]

Although I do think it is a good thing in that it helps strengthen the community support and trust of the police department I have a feeling that it will end at some point in the near future with a lawsuit

This is possible... and the Police chief may be found in the wrong, if he isn't very careful about what representations he makes in public. There could later be made a claim of libelous defamation -- particularly if the twitter messages imply the target for action was affirmatively guilty, and not "Dismissed under suspicion or allegation of X".

Re:Unlikely to last

[TWX]

No, but the department can be sued like a corporation can.

Like I said, I think it is a good thing but that doesn't mean it won't fall to the lawyers.

Even more importantly, depending on how a given state has written their rules on employment and privacy, this kind of thing might be quite illegal in some places, and given specifically that this is the police and an arm of the state, an actual prosecution and conviction might be required for them to assert that anything at all publicly-disclosable has happened.

Slander and libel laws might also apply, especially if there are disputes in the events that led to the dismissals, and moreso if the fired staff member is later vindicated and can demonstrate that the statements made by the employer prevented them from finding work elsewhere. Lots of employers, when called to confirm that someone had worked there, will give little more than a factual statement that the person worked there and the range of time in which they did.

I'm certainly not going to dispute that it's important for employers to stop retaining employees that are actively bad, and doubly so for law enforcement employees, but should something like this backfire on the department then it could not only mean trouble with the employee in question, but trouble disciplining future employees.

As it should be...

[sconeu]

I agree with Forty Two Tenfold. It's good PR Stunt.

If cops are canned for disciplinary reasons, they should be called out in public. Good for the chief here.

Re:Aren't these private websites?

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no state run media to publish in you know. What's the difference between going to the privately owned news paper or news station? And although I haven't checked, I'd be willing to bet that it's on the Dallas police website too.

I'm not a member of either and do not get his tweets or posts

Things aren't done only to serve you, you know. Many more do use those sites and most of those would not have otherwise known.

But by all means, please continue trying to karma whore by posting nonsensical objections based solely on the fact that it mentions social media sites that are unpopular here.

Good start

[Anonymous Coward]

Get rid if your SWAT department, tanks, and machine guns next.

Re:Good start

[aztracker1]

Though a need for tanks is pretty dubious... Any city of over a million residents should probably have a SWAT department, as well as this department having trained snipers and machine guns. It's the extend of this that becomes a problem when you have x% of the population as police, and y% of the police carrying assault weapons regularly.

Afaik, most of the tanks police departments have do not have large caliber gun turrets and are mainly used as mobile barriers in practice... All of that said, I would feel much better if police were less inclined to reach for their weapons as often, the use of tazers in particular has probably done far more harm in every major U.S. city than all of the tanks of all the PDs of the US combined.

Re:Good start

[jklovanc]

And the criminals will be better armed than the police.

Calling what SWAT units have as tanks is misleading. The heaviest vehicles I have seen are like this. These are armored personnel carriers (APCs) and not tanks. Notice no main gun or even heavy armament.

(I wonder if I fed the troll; It is hard to tell now a days)

Is that suitable?

[cold fjord]

If it would end up in the newspaper, fine. Otherwise it could be considered a form of public humiliation.

It also runs contrary to the old rule of praise in public, discipline in private. (Subject to transparency requirements.)

I certainly hope that they aren't finding out after the news goes out.

I wonder how often those tweets will have to be eaten? Tweet in haste, repent at leisure.

Welcome

[troll -1]

The new perp walk.

Re:The Thin Bottom Line

[Anonymous Coward]

Care to elaborate?

I once worked with a police union lawyer before. There are a lot of stupid cops out there, but there are equally a lot of cops who get steamrolled by their chief. For example, maybe the chief wants to reduce his budget. He'll lie about some conduct just so he can fire a cop, ruining that cops career. Or maybe the chief or some other cop wants to retaliate against another cop for being too honest, or maybe just for being female or gay; they'll lie about some behavior to get the other cop fired or disciplined. Insane stuff like this happens all the time, because a lot of cops enter the police force young, and they never grow up.

If a cop truly did something wrong, then usually there'll be evidence of it. If there's evidence, a lawyer can't get the employee off. At best he can beg the review committee for mercy, but they're under no obligation to do so.

Re:Aren't these private websites?

[TrollstonButterbeans]

It doesn't matter if it is a "push for transparency", just whether or not it sounds like it is in a TV commercial or political pamphlet when he runs for whatever office he clearly has in mind.

Ahhh more evidence of militerized police.

[koan]

"I have terminated SC Amy Wilburn today for firing her weapon upon an unarmed person without fear or justification."

Cops where I live are getting scary, the young cops especially.
At the local range I got ~70% of banned names on the board of shame are cops.

Re:Ahhh more evidence of militerized police.

[Indy1]

my guess, the one second rule is "no more then 1 shot fired per second"

Many inexperienced shooters try to fire too quickly (and not fully in control), and hit things they shouldnt, like target holders, other peoples targets, etc.

Personally I hate rules like that, as it interferes with many of my drills, but I'm also a competition handgun shooter, so I've got a little more experience with controlled double taps, Mozambique drills, etc, compared to the average joe.

Re: Good PR

[AvitarX]

I'd think good all around. When you live in the less savory parts of town, all you see is police abusing neighbors, and nobody caring. The residents know which cops misbehave, and don't see anybody getting consequences (somebody getting promoted or fired looks the same from your porch where all you know is you don't see them ). This is why when you're in the bad parts of town everybody hates the cops, even the law abiding citizens. This initiative hopefully allows people to see that those in charge do care.

And yes, I am part of the problem, I support politics, and try to spread the word of abuse to colleagues, but I was not about to file actual complaints and get treated like that. As a white person icing with a white teacher, I had police protection rather than abuse even there (we would often complain about problems and have an officer stop by next day to talk about it, even though the far more upstanding black neighbors would complain for weeks and nobody so of care ).

Dallas Police Massaged Crime Statistics

[Nova Express]

Interesting, because the Dallas Police Department was accused of massaging the crime statistics back when Tom Leppert was Mayor. /Note: I'm part of the vast right wing conspiracy, but those charges were leveled by a columnist for the the left-wing Dallas Observer.

Re:Once more liberals interested in things ...

[JeffAtl]

If the cops tweeted out the names of people arrested for crimes they would go ballistic.

Police departments have been publishing photos and names of people arrested on their websites for years. How could you not know this?

Regardless, cops actually get preferential treatment when it comes to due process as it is almost impossible to find a prosecutor that will try to convict a cop - especially not in the same jurisdiction. Even if cops are caught with overwhelming evidence of criminal acts, the usually face firing where non-cops would face years in prison.

Re:The Thin Bottom Line

[TheloniousToady]

I'm sorry, but if lawyers were running the show, the LAST thing one would expect would be more transparency.

Unless the lawyers happen to be running the show at a gentlemen's club. (Are you tipping?)

Re:Aren't these private websites?

[Known Nutter]

you are immediately confronted with a login page (just like facebook), and you have to have credentials in order to see the posts

But that's not what has happened in this case. DPD's Facebook page is public and viewable without being logged into Facebook, as are the details of each officer's discipline posted on Facebook.

Re:The Thin Bottom Line

[SacredNaCl]

Care to elaborate?

I once worked with a police union lawyer before. There are a lot of stupid cops out there, but there are equally a lot of cops who get steamrolled by their chief. For example, maybe the chief wants to reduce his budget. He'll lie about some conduct just so he can fire a cop, ruining that cops career. Or maybe the chief or some other cop wants to retaliate against another cop for being too honest, or maybe just for being female or gay; they'll lie about some behavior to get the other cop fired or disciplined. Insane stuff like this happens all the time, because a lot of cops enter the police force young, and they never grow up.

If a cop truly did something wrong, then usually there'll be evidence of it. If there's evidence, a lawyer can't get the employee off. At best he can beg the review committee for mercy, but they're under no obligation to do so.

I have witnessed a good officer let go for what I would consider an unjust cause. The officer in question didn't get with the new commanders special forces background, and wasn't hip to the SWAT style tactics that he brought with him. He was the kind of officer that used conversation to defuse dangerous situations rather than force. He was decorated twice for doing just that, defusing two hostage standoffs at great personal risk. The new boss took a minor complaint and went hog wild with it even though he knew there was never any racial animus in the officer. The police officer had no trouble finding another job with another department, but they let him go just before he became eligible for a better pension at retirement.

This is where we're headed

[MindPrison]

Unfortunately, this is the current trend. While it may sound like a PR stunt, this is actually quite tragic. Why? Because it just shows us how FAR we've gotten into total surveillance. Sure, it could be nice to know that a cop is dirty and WHO that cop is, but many are fired for other reasons and this could potentially destroy the individuals future. Say - the cop was actually innocent, he's a human and not just another cop. Now, he'll have a hard time supporting his family because no one wants to hire someone busted on the job. The price we pay for knowing everything about everyone, will one day become too expensive, and I fear - it already is.

Re:Aren't these private websites?

[mysidia]

You don't have to subscribe to get a newspaper. Anyone can simply (and anonymously) purchase a newspaper.

That might be true for some newspapers -- but even if the newspaper required showing an ID to be logged in a database, in order to purchase without a regular subscription: it would still count as a public notice, as long as enough people in the community were buying it.

If you're not a member, you don't get that 'news

Anyone with access to an internet connection can freely become a "member" of Twitter. Which is sufficient. It is not required to provide anonymous access, for Public notices, records, and documentation, to be officiallyl recognized as public notices, records, documentation, etc.

In fact, to view public records at a courthouse, in general You have to show ID, and possibly sign a log.

Also; in general, you do not need to signup for membership on Twitter just to view or search tweets, aside from tweets from "private" (restricted) users. You only need a "membership" to use mobile devices, to send your own messages, or to use the convenient "follow" action --- to get notification of another user's tweets.