Attention fellow police officers worldwide! If we are not using social media for the good, social media will find us with the bad!
…. and… it is ok to walk down the street as a police officer with your same sex partner! Thanks for the pics Sara Faruqui #LoveWins
Posted by Toronto Police Service on Sunday, June 28, 2015
Constable Christopher Atwood and his partner Joseph Barrett walk together in the Toronto Pride Parade June 28, 2015
We had over a million people join us at #PrideTO today at the parade. Happy Pride everyone.
— Pride Toronto (@PrideToronto) June 29, 2015
Cyndi Lauper just met @TorontoPolice chief Saunders and his wife. pic.twitter.com/k7kG6Nmpa3
— Tara Deschamps (@tara_deschamps) June 28, 2015
Social Media For Communications Strategy led to Toronto Police Service Corporate Communications Issues Manager Meaghan Gray @MrsMeaghanGray Trending on Twitter at the 2015 Toronto Pride Parade! and @TorontoPolice reaching close to 1 million twitter accounts! #PrideTO
Meaghan Gray, @mrsmeaghangray is now trending in #Toronto http://t.co/aqsD7sgjX4
— Trendsmap Toronto (@TrendsToronto) June 28, 2015
It was with great #Pride that I was assigned to work as the Toronto Police Service Social Media Officer for the 2015 Pride Parade alongside Incident Commander Superintendent Hugh Ferguson in the Toronto Police Operations Centre.
There was an entire team approach to ensuring the success and safety of the Pride Festivities both on and off social media. What was really exciting for me in my role was to watch the amazing social media being done by our Toronto Police fully social media trained colleagues Officers Danielle Bottineau (Twitter @LGBTCop) and Henry Dyck of the LGBTQ Internal Support Network (Twitter @TDotGayCops)
On Sunday June 28 for the Pride Parade, we also welcomed a dedicated cop duo Constables Laurie McCann (Twitter @TheCoffeeCop) and Alex Li (Twitter @CopWhoLovesCars) as well as our Toronto Police Service Corporate Communications Issues Manager Meaghan Gray (twitter @MrsMeaghanGray) who were using social media exclusively for community engagement.
Many other officers were involved and contributed to the success including Wendy Drummond, Shawna Coxon Randy Arsenault and Julie Rowe to name a few
For a full list of contributors please click here:
Pride in Toronto is arguably the largest single annual event, although many will say that “Caribana” (now formally known as the Scotiabank Caribbean Festival) is largest.
It was interesting to learn from Supt Ferguson that this was his 35th Pride Parade that he worked as a police officer since the parade started in 1981. This means that in one way or another he has worked every single Toronto Pride Parade. He quietly admitted that relations were not always this great between Toronto Police and the gay community. Supt Ferguson beamed with Pride throughout the day knowing that he was commanding a cohesive team. His final orders to his officers before being deployed were “Have Fun”
And … Have fun we did!
By the end of the day, Supt Ferguson asked if we had any analytics to show the reach in social media.
For $20 on TweetReach a report indicated that 948,070 twitter accounts had been reached with 10,216,236 impressions! (Note: Twitter Canada say that third party analytics programs like this identify the potential reach and not the actual reach like twitter analytics do.) See ads.twitter.com for more info
It was a proud moment to demonstrate that we were doing very well in social media, contrary to what was being reported in Turkey. Watch video of police in Turkey dispersing Pride Parade crowd June 28, 2015 with water canons and rubber bullets
Back in Toronto, it was exciting to see the worldwide reach of social media good with the hash tag #PrideTO. I was proud to show to colleagues a tweet from Twitter Canada’s News And Government representative Steve Ladurantaye showing the reach of social media worldwide
Location of last 25,000 tweets using #prideTO, via @sysomos. pic.twitter.com/zdjibrb4h7
— Steve Ladurantaye (@sladurantaye) June 28, 2015
In conclusion, whether you agree with the accuracy of the ‘TweetReach’ analytics results or not, it is clear that the community of Toronto on the streets at Pride and in social media have huge Klout for social media good!… The police in Turkey.. well..will leave that up to you to decide!
Turkish police fired tear gas and rubber pellets into Istanbul's gay pride parade: http://t.co/5B5ocYxuiD pic.twitter.com/5aRqz0weOp
— CNN International (@cnni) June 29, 2015
Using analytics on ‘TweetReach’ the @TorontoPolice twitter account on hash tag #PrideTO reached 948,070 accounts with 10,216,236 impressions.