Two 2nd Police District officers are using neighborhood social media sites to send alerts, crime-prevention tips and other information directly to residents.
“This is a pilot program,” Capt. Frank Palumbo, the 2nd’s commander, said last week, that lets cops keep their communities informed. No other Philly police district has a partnership with Nextdoor, he said. Officers Ashley Capaldi and Raymond Esquilin have been putting out posts since Jan. 12, Palumbo said.
The program will help police and residents communicate, the captain said, but added, “I don’t want people to stop using 911” to report crimes.
Capaldi said last week that police are not going to be posting information about crime as it is happening. No “live jobs” are going to go online, she said.
San Francisco-based Nextdoor operates 49,000 free — and private — neighborhood social media sites throughout the nation, according to the company’s communications manager, Jen Burke.
In mid-December, several city departments began posting information to the hundreds of sites the company maintains in Philadelphia. For example, last week, the Office of Emergency Management posted tips on winter fire safety. That went out citywide.
The cops’ posts in the 2nd, however, are customized for the district’s three Police Service Areas. Capaldi last week said she and Esquilin soon would be putting out information on some burglaries in one part of the 2nd. All the Nextdoor sites in one particular PSA will see that post; others will not, Capaldi said. She and Esquilin, however, won’t see how neighbors respond to that post unless somebody contacts them directly, she said. This protects members’ privacy.
Burke said that, nationwide, 20 percent of the conversations on Nextdoor sites are about crime and safety.
Capaldi said Nextdoor sites are similar to Facebook sites. People who use the site are able to communicate generally or directly.
To sign up for a neighborhood site, a person has to prove he or she is a resident of the area the site serves, Burke said. This keeps people from outside an area just that — outside. Address verification is done with credit card, telephone number or through the mails, she said. This keeps each site locally exclusive.
Somebody signed up for the Lawncrest-South site, for example, can’t see posts on another site or participate in that other site in any way.
Capaldi said about 800 residents are signed up for Nextdoor sites in the 2nd. Most of those residents are in the district’s north end, she added.
Whether or not more — or every — police district gets involved in posting on Nextdoor depends on the success of the 2nd’s program.
That success will be measured in a few ways, Capaldi said. If Captain Palumbo gets improved responses from the community, that would be one measurement. For example, she said, if more community members show up at meetings the captain attends, that would be considered an improved response.
Also, she said she and Esquilin will be encouraging Nextdoor members to register their private security systems with the department’s SafeCam program. Detectives contact registered system owners when they suspect their surveillance recordings might be useful to their investigations. Increased SafeCam registration would, therefore, be another measure of the Nextdoor program’s success.
Another gauge would be the amount of direct responses the officers get to their posts. Nextdoor uses “thanks” rather than “like.” A lot of “thanks” would be considered another measure of success.
To learn more about Nextdoor, visit www.nextdoor.com
There is a demonstration site at http://demo.trynextdoor.com/vip ••
