Boston P.D./City of Boston Use Twitter & FB To Recover Stolen Bicycles…

The Boston Police Department has been using @stolenbikebos and FaceBook Stolen Bikes Boston page to locate stolen bicycles in their jurisdiction. This is an opportune use of two of the largest social media communities to encourage people to get involved in their community. Here is how it works. If your bike is stolen you can report it through Twitter or FaceBook to the Stolen Bike’s Boston-Community Alert Program, uploading a picture of your bike for easy identification.

The stolen bike program is run through City Hall and not the Boston PD, which is a little odd, but positive none the less. Tweet reporting of stolen bikes does go through the @stolenbikebos, but the Boston PD retweet’s this program’s tweets @Boston_PD. Kudos to the City of Boston for using social media to help reduce crime. The stolen bike program also allows citizens to report locations of stolen bicycles to the police through Twitter and FaceBook for quicker recovery of stolen property.

I originally found this article on Mashable and not on the Boston Police Department’s home page. The strange thing to me is the Boston PD is on Twitter and they have had a blog since 2005 (readily found on the Boston PD website homepage), but if you scan their website Boston PD you will almost find no mention of social media. This is confusing to me. What an opportunity the Boston PD has to engage their citizens on a positive front. All too many times police and citizen contact is negative, in this case you are turing communication with citizens from a negative into a positive using social media. The Boston PD could take the stolen bicycle program and place it right on the front of their homepage with both Twitter and FB links for easier access by Bostonians. Mike Vallez

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