Manatee law enforcement officials urge residents to stop using social media to report emergencies

If you use Facebook to alert law enforcement of an urgent crime or another emergency, Manatee deputies and police officers have some advice.

Don’t do it.

According to Manatee County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Dave Bristow, reporting emergencies on social media isn’t the best idea.

“This has been something we’ve dealt with since Facebook started to get really popular in the last couple of years, and we’ve had a few instances where somebody messages on Facebook something that they really should’ve called 911 about,” he said.

“We would stress the same thing,” said Lt. Brian Thiers, Bradenton Police Department spokesman. “In an emergency, seconds count. We ask for 911 to be your first line of communication.”

Bristow did mention that, for law enforcement, the positives of social media far outweigh the negatives, but every now and again they’ll run into a problem.

Several deputies with the sheriff’s office monitor the social media site and through that monitoring, they have noticed some residents have started to use it to report emergencies.

“I think people thought or still may think it’s almost like a chat room, that we have somebody standing by to chat with them and that’s not the case,” Bristow said. “But we do now monitor it 24/7 through nights and weekends but there could still be a gap in response, and in an emergency that’s just not safe.”

Using Facebook for emergencies can present multiple problems for law enforcement.

First, people may send the message too late for deputies to get to the scene in time. Also, though the sheriff’s office monitors the site, they may not see the message right away, which could mean life or death in a critical situation.

People are better off calling 911, Bristow says. For 24 hours a day, dispatchers have the tools needed to get law enforcement and emergency responders out to scenes as quickly as possible.

“We do have an automatic instant message on Facebook telling people to call 911 if it’s an emergency or the non-emergency line or even to email me,” Bristow said. “There’s loads of options.”

The sheriff’s office said it hasn’t become a major problem yet because the majority of people don’t use the page to report emergencies. Regardless, they are still trying to get the word out that this isn’t the fastest and most effective way to get help during that kind of a situation.

“We’ve got a handle on it but it would sure be nice if people used it to let us know something that doesn’t need to be reported right away, like a speeding problem on their street or something like that,” Bristow said. “That’s fine, and people often message us things like that, but it’s the emergencies where we’d rather them call.”

For the police department, Thiers also asks people to try and not to send them crime tips on Facebook, either.

“People can send us messages of a tip if they want ... we don’t want to discourage anyone from using Facebook to communicate with police, but we have specific places for you send us a tip.”

Thiers is referring to the email crimetips@cityofbradenton.com, where he says criminal investigators receive the tips and get them to the right detectives. He also said the public can visit the department’s website at bradentonpd.com. There, people can report a crime or send a tip on the homepage and remain anonymous, Thiers said.

“We definitely want people to communicate with us on social media,” he said. “It is the fastest way for us to get our message out there but it’s not the fastest way we can receive your message.”

This story was originally published July 24, 2018 at 8:00 AM.