Citizens urged to support Boston Marathon safety by downloading VizSAFE mobile app to instantly share photos and videos with first responders

Boston, MA USA – April 15, 2014 – VizSAFE, the only universal mobile crowdsourcing safety app and community website, today announced it will be monitored by law enforcement during the 118th Boston Marathon. VizSAFE, like other social media, is free and empowers the “crowd” to capture photos or videos of anything that impacts the well-being of the athletes, family, fans and spectators at the Marathon.

When Deputy Mark Gregory set out to launch a social media presence for the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office, he knew he was bound to face a few obstacles. Like any law enforcement agency posting communications on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, he would need to justify the usage of each site to his internal team, and create a plan for how citizen’s comments and replies were managed. He would need internal and external social media policies to address issues such as employee use, comment moderation, and the need to maintain compliance with government requirements such as the Washington Public Records Act. Regardless, Mark knew that it was essential to move forward. As he explained, “It’s a very important tool for law enforcement agencies. We must be able to openly communicate with the citizens we serve and social media is one of the most effective ways we can do that.”

                Introduction

Social media has become a useful and ubiquitous tool of modern policing.After a slow start, policing organisations worldwide have embraced the medium’s potential for engaging with the pubic, adopting an imaginative array of policing strategies based around Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and many other social media platforms.

 
by Aaron Holloway
Ever thought of using a celebrity to endorse and help spread your key messages via social media? I’m not talking about getting an “A list” Hollywood movie star as we all know that most law enforcement budgets don’t extend that the far.