THE Mount Isa Police District unofficially gets its own ‘cop reporter’ this week, with a new position dedicated to increasing the information published on the MyPolice blog.
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Yet local Facebook police pages supplying updates, such as the ‘Cloncurry Cops’, will shut down. Readers will be encouraged to access the MyPolice blog or the QPS page instead.
‘Cloncurry Cops’ was considered a success to local police since it began two years ago, and gave updates on road closures, feel good stories about milestones, and responded to community concerns such as juvenile graffiti. It was followed by more than 2100 accounts.
A post was published on the page announcing its deactivation last Friday.
Our police sources say the closure of the Cloncurry Cops page was due to a standardisation in media policy across the Queensland Police Service.
Retired Superintendent Russell Miller, who led the Mount Isa Police District when the page formed, was disappointed about its deactivation and said it had been a great initiative.
“A lot of the information posted on the site will not be seen as significant enough to be posted on the Mount Isa MyBlog or QPS Facebook page, so the local Cloncurry community will be the ones who miss out on what is happening in their own backyard,” Mr Miller said.
“Police should always be encouraged to develop and maintain partnerships with their local community and the use of social media is just another way of doing that.”
Cloncurry Police Station’s officer-in-charge, Senior Sergeant Brad Rix, said there was “understandable caution surrounding the consistency and integrity of the information” released on localised Facebook pages. This was the reason the QPS could not support them.
“There has been a huge amount of support for our page, not just since we announced we would be deactivating the page, but pretty much since the page was created.
“Our commitment to the town is not diminished despite the loss of this information source.”
District crime prevention officer Sergeant Cath Purcell said all the information that would have been on the Cloncurry Cops page will be on the MyPolice blog.
The blog could still be copied and shared by Facebook users, she said. Sgt Purcell said the new position will be filled this week, which she will initially support.
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