BILLINGS — 2,312—that’s the number of calls for service the Billings Police Department responded to from July 2-9. This comes from a social media post by the department, as they recently began publishing weekly crime briefs on Facebook.
"All the (numbers) that we have on there are probably the ones that I think speak the most to what we’re doing on a day-to-day basis that the public kind of wants to know about,” said Matt Lennick, the administrative lieutenant at the police department, on Tuesday. "One of our followers just sent us a message on (Facebook) Messenger and was like, ‘Hey, there’s another department that does something similar to this, is it something that you guys could maybe do?’ And so Sgt. (Samantha) Puckett and I looked at it, and it was something that we could easily grab the numbers. It takes me about 15 minutes on Monday morning to pull all of the numbers."
The numbers can be staggering.
“I think when you see it on a week-to-week basis versus the one time at the end of the year for the annual report, it’s a little different. It’s easier to look at a whole year and be like, ‘Oh, 90,000 calls for service.’ Well, that comes down to, you know the guys are responding to a couple hundred calls for service every day. And so I think it’s been good, so we’re going to keep doing it,” Lennick said. "People are kind of surprised by (the numbers). So another thing to remember with that, is that is every time we charge or arrest somebody, an arrest report is created. So if I arrest one person and they have five different charges, that’s five arrest reports. So even when you’re thinking, ‘Oh my god, they arrested 190 people.’ Well, we really didn’t arrest 190 people. It was more like, I think it was in the 80s when you actually look at the number of people."
Weekly briefs from the Billings Police Department are now being posted every Monday to the department’s Facebook page.
It's an effort to show the public how busy officers are, and how their time is spent.
"It hopefully will educate the public on why their day might look like it looks because of the amount of stuff coming in and the amount of resources that it requires to get through the day," Lennick said.
Lennick runs much of the social media for the department and says the new weekly postings are already sparking conversation.
"There’s a little bit of everything in the comments, but for the most part, positive. I think people want to know," Lennick said. "There’s always the ones that are like, ‘Great job!’ Which we appreciate, we’re very thankful that people are supporting the work that the guys are doing. We’ve had some questions, some I’ll answer, some I won’t. I’m not going to get into any politic-type stuff, I’m not going to get into a back-and-forth about the way somebody feels about something. But if it’s just a straightforward question that I have access to an answer, I’ll probably throw an answer out."
That’s not the only change Billings police are making.
The department has also decided to make the switch from Twitter to Facebook to alert the public about major crime events.
“Twitter switched the way they were operating business. We used the Tweetdeck in order to put out our information. They blocked Tweetdeck for anybody that wasn’t verified, so that was going to require us to become verified and to pay. It was not financially responsible as a government agency to choose to pay a social media site to put out information to the public," Lennick said. "I’ve got two or three times the followers on Facebook that I ever did on Twitter. I’m reaching a much wider demographic... What we were putting out is not going to change, the layout’s not going to change other than it will maybe be full sentences instead of these blips of words because we were restricted by our characters by Twitter."
Big changes, and a new way of relaying information to the public.
“That’s incredible," Merci Powers, a Billings resident, said Tuesday while walking downtown. "I didn’t even know that that many calls could be made, honestly."
Another Billings resident, Caleb Perdew, agreed.
“It feels as though it’s a little like they’re running around a lot," Perdew said on a downtown sidewalk. "It sounds like they're overloaded. But I think it's helpful to know all of the things that they're running."
Lennick has a suggestion for those wanting to keep up to date on Billings police happenings.
“I would suggest that if people are interested in what we’re putting out, that they follow us. I mean if you want the information we’re putting out, you’re going to have to follow the page," Lennick said. "I don’t think that the taxpayers want us frivolously spending money on social media stuff if we don’t have to. So we’re going to try to see how it works, if for whatever reason it doesn’t work and people aren’t getting the information, we’ll re-evaluate. But for the time being, that’s where we’re going to go and just see how it works."
To view the Billings Police Department's Facebook page, click here.
"I think it speaks to what we have going on in a week. The general public, they’re not aware that we’re responding to that much, that there’s that much stuff going on," Lennick said. "So, I think it’s been fairly popular and I think people like it. We’ll continue doing it and just kind of sharing."
