How tongue-in-cheek tweets bring UCAPD and students closer
@ucapolicedept
He seems quiet, reserved and almost shy as he cautiously pulls out his mobile device to stop the silent vibrations indicating that he has messages waiting for a response. Sheepishly, he grins as he stares at the device before beginning to tap on its screen. He stops tapping but continues to look down. Within just a few seconds, he quietly chuckles and starts to tap on the screen again.
When he finishes, University of Central Arkansas Police Department Staff Sgt. Brad Moore slides the phone back into his pocket before he re-engages in conversation with other police officers as they enjoy lunch.
As the primary voice behind UCAPD’s Twitter account, Moore is in constant communication with account followers.
“I am on Twitter from about 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week,” Moore said while explaining that at least four others in the campus police department have access to the account, but he has the primary responsibility for it.
He comments or responds to questions while on vacation, in the grocery store and other odd places and times.
“I actually responded to someone while sitting in church,” Moore said. “The student wanted to know if he could park in faculty/staff parking on Sundays.”
The answer was yes, but Moore generally goes further. He saved images of specific policies and procedures from the UCA Student Handbook and other sources that answer some of the most frequently asked questions he receives. He posts the images with his responses.
This increased communication between campus police and students was the major goal behind the UCAPD’s decision to begin using Twitter in September 2013 with the handle @ucapolicedept.
“I often tell our officers, you, as a uniformed police officer on this campus, are going to perhaps be the first person in law enforcement that many of our students will ever have contact with, so that means that we can change people’s perceptions by the way that we conduct ourselves,” said UCAPD Chief Larry James. “We have to have that softer side.”
Moore showed his softer side to followers his very first day managing the account. “The very first day we started it, it was taken away from me,” he said.
He said a student was on Twitter complaining about the number of tickets he had received. “The student tweeted, ‘If I get just one more ticket, just one more ticket,’ and I posted, ‘Where are you parked, and what are you driving?’ ” Moore recalled with a hearty laugh.
Moore was immediately removed from his Twitter duties and told to apologize to the student. He invited the student to the police department for a personal apology. Upon arrival, the student told Moore he thought the response was hilarious.
From then on, Moore was given a little freedom in his interactions with followers, who seem to enjoy his jokes that are often laced with a hint of sarcasm.
“I misspelled a word this one time in a tweet, and I got called out on it,” he said. “I responded with another tweet, and I said something like, ‘I guess I shouldn’t be tweeting and driving,’ and the students just loved it.”
Fun and games take a backseat during more serious times on campus such as snow days when the police department tweets almost 24 hours a day updating its audience about road conditions on and off campus, campus closure information, and weather updates while also responding to questions and concerns.
During campus closures in February and March due to inclement weather, the UCAPD Twitter account saw its followers grow from 4,400 on Feb. 14 to 5,299 on Feb. 21. By March 2, the number had increased to 5,444.
With that increase of more than 1,000 new followers, the Twitter account continues to prove to be a useful tool for the department.
Moore and the department initially decided to shield his identity as another strategy to connect to the audience.
“Students were approaching officers at night asking them if they were doing the Twitter account. Well, that opened up the communications between students and our patrol,” Moore said.
“If they come to us with little, bitty things, to me, if they can do that, then if something major happens, they have no problem coming to us. They can come straight to us and feel free to talk to us.”
