The Fort Worth Police Department’s social media accounts are the envy of many government organizations, and it isn’t hard to see why. Its YouTube videos have gone viral and seen hundreds of thousands of views, its Twitter account has around 173,000 followers, and its Facebook page has 240,000 likes and 250,000 followers.

Moreover, these aren’t passive followers. Every Fort Worth P.D. tweet and Facebook post sees plenty of engagement, with citizens liking, sharing, and commenting widely.

“Social media is incredibly important to the Fort Worth Police Department,” says Tom Sullivan, the police department’s Communications Specialist overseeing social media. “Without it, we simply wouldn’t be able to respond as effectively to citizens’ needs. People make use of our social media accounts to engage with us about any and every issue that’s important to them—they’ll ask us why the interstate has been closed, who their neighborhood police officer is, how they can report a crime, or even request our presence in front of a school because people are speeding past it.”

The Challenges of Social Media Success

Of course, it’s no surprise that this sort of social media success introduces certain challenges. With so many followers and so much active engagement, there’s an awful lot of content that needs to be moderated.

“We have one of the largest social media followings of any law enforcement agency in the country, and it’s my job to moderate channels and remove inappropriate comments,” says Sullivan. “But when you’re dealing with around 400,000 followers across the platforms, it can be incredibly time-consuming to manage all the comments that need to be deleted.”

As a public-sector entity, the Fort Worth Police Department cannot simply delete comments—regardless of how inappropriate they are—without inviting concerns over citizens’ First Amendment rights. This means that Sullivan has to create a record of a comment before deleting it that will prove that the deletion was justified if it’s ever challenged. It goes without saying that when your accounts are this active, this task can quickly become overwhelming.

Why Manual Capture Doesn’t Work

Like many public social media practitioners, Sullivan originally relied on the manual capture and archiving of records related to deleted comments. Whenever something needed to be deleted, he would first take a screenshot and manually save the file. But with all his other responsibilities, this was simply too time-consuming.

“As mentioned, we use social media not only as a public relations tool, but also as a way of communicating directly with citizens. This means that my biggest responsibility is responding to all the questions and comments we receive in a timely manner, and the manual archiving of records was taking me away from this,” says Sullivan.

The primary goal of the police department’s social media records was to protect the agency from First Amendment challenges and lawsuits, but like any manual process, screenshotting opened the door to human error and data loss; a file could be misnamed or accidentally deleted. Automated archiving greatly reduced the odds that a crucial record would be lost.

Fort Worth P.D. Opts for Automation

Thanks to the time investment required and risk associated with manual social media recordkeeping, Tom Sullivan and the Fort Worth Police Department decided to adopt automated social media archiving through Pagefreezer.

With Pagefreezer, all data associated with Fort Worth P.D.’s Twitter and Facebook accounts are automatically archived in real-time through API integration with the social media platforms. This means that Sullivan can rest easy knowing that the department has access to a complete record of all social media activity (including all changes and deletions). He can simply delete a comment and know that, should the decision to remove it ever be challenged, retrieving it would be simple. Moreover, thanks to Pagefreezer’s API integration with the platforms, all available data is also collected, including text, photos, links, and metadata.

All Pagefreezer archives are accessed through a simple and intuitive dashboard that allows users to search archived data, view metrics, browse archives in the same look and feel as the original social media network, export content in various file formats, and easily deliver on open records requests. Additionally, Pagefreezer meets the standards for digital evidence and facilitates the legal hold process by stamping each archived page with an RFC 3136 compliant Time Stamp Authority and a SHA-256 digital signature.

Another important feature of Pagefreezer’s solution for an organization like the Fort Worth Police Department is the fact that it offers unlimited records. Every change to a social media account—every post, comment, like, unlike, and share—results in a new record. If a vendor charges per record, as some do, and you have very active social media accounts, a solution can end up being more expensive than anticipated. Pagefreezer’s unlimited records policy provides the budget certainty public-sector organizations need.

About Fort Worth

About Fort Worth

Fort Worth, one of the largest cities in Texas and the 15th largest city in the United States, is a destination shaped by its revitalized downtown, a world-renowned cultural arts district, beautifully preserved Western-heritage sites and major-league attractions. Fort Worth is the seat of Tarrant County, situated in North Central Texas and part of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex.

Fort Worth has been ranked as one of the fastest growing large cities in the United States of cities with populations of 500,000 or more, has been named one of “America’s Most Livable Communities” by the Partners for Livable Communities, and in January 2013 was named a Safe Community by the National Safety Council.

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