GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – The Green Bay Police Department is considering an additional way to interact with the people through Facebook Live.
Introduced earlier this year, Facebook Live gives people, businesses and organizations the ability to immediately connect with friends or followers.
Captain Kevin Warych tells WLUK the feature is something the Green Bay Police Department is interested in using.
“At the police department, we always look for different ways to connect with the community and we’re using social media and Facebook as one possible method to maintain the open dialogue that we really stress every day”
For people who like or follow the department’s Facebook page, they can choose to receive notifications if police decide to post or go live.
Warych says using the live feature is in the beginning stages.
“This is a concept at this point and we’re just really putting it out to the community to gauge interest”
The Green Bay Police Department already uses its Facebook page in a number of different ways.
“Our department Facebook is managed by our crime prevention staff and they monitor it daily, they post stuff on there and you’ll often see pictures of suspects committing a crime and asking the community’s help and they update that… read the posts that come in. There’s definitely a evolution of how of how information is disseminated.”
Mark Glantz, assistant professor of communication and media studies at St. Norbert College, agrees, especially with the use of social media.
“The deal with new media and social media is, everybody that’s on there to consume messages, also has the opportunity to produce messages and typically we would view that a positive thing”
Warych talked about how the station would use Facebook live.
“In this situation, if there’s an issue in the community, an unfortunate incident or something that goes viral and people have questions, we’re gauging interest to determine whether Facebook Live will be a, kind of, question and answer period for the community”.
If you’d like to see the department use Facebook Live or have tips on what you’d like to see, send the department a Facebook message.
