Altoona Police Department Chief Janice Freehling said crime is down, and she partly attributes that to their Facebook page encouraging citizen policing in the city.
“The number of people that we reach on a daily basis is really impressive,” Altoona Police Sergeant Benjamin Jones said. “A lot of the things that we’ve done, we couldn’t have done without their help.”
Homicide, robbery, assault; violent crime is down across the board, and Facebook is helping catch the bad guys.
“An officer reads every message that comes in,” Jones said. He has been in charge of the Altoona Police Facebook Page for more than a year.
The page was originally created to keep the public informed, but it has transformed. Now, the inverse is true; the community is helping the department.
“Policing is a community activity,” Jones said. “I mean, we need the community’s involvement. We can’t be everywhere all the time.”
Jones and other officers regularly post mug shots and surveillance video to the page. Within minutes, the posts reach upwards of 150,000 people.
“There’s been countless times that we’ve had situations where we would post someone, and within 10 minutes, we were able to have the identity of somebody who committed an armed robbery or various types of thefts and things like that,” Jones said. “It’s happened more times than I could remember and sit here and count for you.”
Sgt. Jones said they receive up to 100 messages each week with tips. With more than 40,000 followers, catching the next criminal is sometimes just a matter of checking Facebook.
“The reward we get for taking that time to ask for the community’s help is immeasurable.”