After a somber rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner,” newly minted Miami Police Chief Jorge Colina kicked off the annual SMILEcon — an acronym for the Social Media Internet Law Enforcement conference — with a timely dad joke.“My name is Jorge,” Colina said to the crowd of about 150 cops, public information officers, and law enforcement officials on Monday. “Which sounds a lot like ‘Yanny.’” The audience roared with laughter. Advertisem*nt Advertisem*nt
“We never understood that others tell our stories. But the only people who experience what we do is us,” Colina told SMILEcon’s audience. “There’s nothing more powerful than telling our story. Humanize the police officer.”
“HURRICANE IRMA #HOTCOPS PLOT TWISTS”
One of the officers on the front line of that fight is Sgt. Ben Tobias of the Gainesville Police Department, which oversees a liberal student enclave in the middle of red Florida. He took the stage on Monday afternoon to share his experiences of going viral not once, not twice, but four times in recent years — and talk about what happened after.One of those viral moments included the infamous #HotCop photo. Tobias had solicited photos from Gainesville officers assisting with Hurricane Irma relief efforts and posted one on the department’s social media feeds, where several commenters noticed the officers were, well, hot.
As Tobias described what happened, bullet points in his presentation highlighted the basics: Advertisem*nt
The Gainesville PD’s social feeds got flooded with comments, many of a graphic sexual nature. “I can’t believe how many women are objectifying these poor, fine, young, strong, handsome, brave, sexy, delicious, virile, ovulation-inducing, mouth-watering, beefy,” one commenter wrote. “…. I can’t remember where I was going with this.”
Hamill ultimately resigned amid an internal affairs investigation. And though the Gainesville Police Department was forced to delete the original #HotCop picture, it capitalized on the momentum anyway by putting out a calendar featuring pictures of brooding, shirtless officers (notably absent Hamill) to raise money for an initiative promoting police-community relations.For officer Daniel Rengering, the newfound fame didn’t stop there: He’s reportedly taken a leave of absence from the department to join the next season of “Survivor.”
“Strategic vlogging”
Sgt. Misael Reyes and Officer Nick Perez, both from the Miami Police Department, also gave a seminar on “strategic vlogging” as a way to teach the public about the day-to-day activities of policing. The duo showcased their slickly produced YouTube channel series, which has over 140,000 subscribers and all the trappings of a reality TV show.“We have to fight the misinformation that’s been put out there by the media,” Reyes told VICE News. Advertisem*nt
Another, more recent video from “Season 3,” entitled “Big Bust on Patrol,” shows long cinematic scenes of Perez driving through Miami or putting on a bulletproof vest while hip-hop plays in the background. He also interviews various officers at crime scenes around the city. One officer, rocking a pair of reflective Oakley sunglasses, opens the trunk of a red Maserati to reveal a cache of firearms discovered during patrol.
When Reyes and Perez first brought the idea of a vlog to their chief in 2016, they said, he went for it immediately. At the time, Miami Police Department had been battling a rash of negative publicity. For example, federal officials concluded in 2013 that Miami cops routinely engaged in excessive force, which led to a high rate of police shootings: seven young black men were killed in eight months in 2011.Meanwhile, former Miami Police Union president Lt. Javier Ortiz, who was suspended last year for harassing a woman on Facebook, had been making headlines with controversial public statements. He called Tamir Rice — the unarmed, 12-year-old victim of a fatal police shooting in a Cleveland park — “a thug” and urged a boycott of Beyoncé’s concert in Miami following her “anti-police” performance at the Super Bowl that year. Advertisem*nt
Cops from around the world
It wasn’t just U.S. law enforcement attending this year’s SMILEcon. Delegates came all the way from Panama, the United Kingdom, and even Turks and Caicos, where some were repeat attendees. “If you’ve been to a SMILE conference before, then you’re a SMILE Head,” chirped organizer Lauri Stevens over the mic as she hoisted a box of rum given to her by the officers from Turks and Caicos. “Don’t forget to tweet and tag SMILEcon,” she added.Recently retired Kerry Blakeman, former Chief Inspector of West Midland Police Department which encompasses the city of Birmingham and hosted its own SMILE conference in 2014 — gave several lectures about the PR benefits of social media.Blakeman, a recipient of the UK Police Twitter Award and 2015’s SMILE “Top Cop” winner, was inspired to start livestreaming his department’s activities when he saw his daughter watching a live YouTube broadcast from Harry Styles, a former member of the beloved boy band One Direction. Advertisem*nt
Blakeman also joined Officer Dave Wardell of the Hertfordshire Constabulary, U.K., and Finn, a German Shepherd police dog and the protagonist of the book, “Fabulous Finn: The Brave Police Dog Who Came Back from the Brink.”Wardell and Finn were stabbed in 2016 by a teenager while they were responding to reports of a robbery. Finn was left with potentially life-threatening injuries, and Wardell shared regular updates about the dog’s road to recovery online, inspiring a viral social media campaign advocating for better protections for service animals.Wardell spent much of the conference signing copies of the Finn book, which turned the shepherd into such a celebrity that the department was able to crowdfund the dog’s travel costs to Miami.
“We have control over what’s going out,” Seb Ellis, former officer with Kingston Police Department in London and founder of a social media consulting agency, told SMILEcon in another presentation. “It’s our message, our words.”But given the cultural and procedural differences between U.K. and U.S. policing, social media might not be the panacea attendees at this year’s conference hope. Police in the U.K. killed seven people in 2017 (four of whom were engaged in terror attacks) compared to American police who killed nearly 1,000. And most officers in the U.K. don’t carry guns unless they’re in a specialized firearms unit.“We learn from each other,” Blakeman said. “They’re up against different challenges,” Ellis added.