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The Edmonton Police Service has a new partner in crime prevention, leading Canada’s police agencies with enviable engagement numbers.

Social media is a literal hit for the Edmonton Police Service, with the agency’s social team racking up thousands of followers and millions of engagements on five social media platforms on the internet.

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The EPS is punching above its social media weight, said Patricia Misutka, the EPS executive director for corporate communications.

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She told the Edmonton Police Commission on Thursday the EPS internet squad in 2023 garnered a whopping nine million impressions and six million engagements — the bread and butter of social media marketing — with an engagement rate of almost 10 per cent, when a rate of 3.5 per cent is considered pretty good for social media marketing.

“The Edmonton Police Service is in the middle of the pack (size-wise), but about four times as engaged as other services,” she said.

The EPS Facebook page engagement average was 729,000, while other police departments averaged closer to 105,000.

“The closest was the Calgary police service at 314,000, and Waterloo at 158,000,” she said.

Comparing EPS social media accounts with those of the city, the City of Edmonton audience is larger by about 30,000 people.

But when it comes to engagement, the Edmonton Police Service accounts outperform the City of Edmonton by about 275,000 on average.

“The Edmonton Police Service receives about 440 engagements per post, whereas the City of Edmonton gets about 47,” Misutka said.

At the top of the engagement pile, Facebook is the story-telling feed with news releases, community involvement and promotion of special days and events.

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Next most read is X, formerly known as Twitter, with a news feed that includes news releases, alerts and immediate attention items.

There’s Instagram, which is about people and places where the EPS goes.

LinkedIn is about company culture, people and programs awards.

And finally, YouTube is the “6 p.m. newscast.” If you missed an EPS news conference, you’ll find it there.

Most read posts of 2023

Most-read posts of 2023 showed avid interest in somber stories as well as uplifting pieces.

Top posts included line-of-duty deaths, the untimely passing of Const. Corinne Kline, the West Edmonton Mall shooting and the regimental funeral for two slain officers.

On the lighter side, the EPS canine recruit, the Beeping Easter Eggs event in partnership with the Edmonton Police Foundation, helping out the Westlock RCMP, the retirement of the crime-fighting duo of Const. Lauren Croxford and police service dog Bender, and graduations.

The most dramatic spikes in followers and interactions for the EPS pages occurred in March with line of duty deaths and, in August, Bill C-18, when Canada suspended advertising on Facebook and Instagram and the Meta blocked news sites from its platforms.

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Shooter at West Edmonton Mall

The shooting at West Edmonton Mall tested the department’s abilities in social media as well as in tactics, the commission heard.

“In the lockdown, there was all sorts of rumors about casualties. So the Edmonton Police Service took control, making sure that we got accurate information out, and within two hours issued six updates from start to finish on the event,” Misutka said.

“We saw 3,300 comments and more than 6,000 new followers the next day,” she said.

“So what did we learn? We learned that social media can take a pretty big toll and emotional hold on those who monitor it … that there’s lots of support for the service.

“We learned that the audience wants information quickly. And it is important to address misinformation quickly,” she said.

“And we also learned that the public trusts EPS in emergency situations.”

Misutka said EPS’s audience wants to see the Edmonton Police Service doing its job doing it well, and wants to see the Edmonton Police Service getting results — and it wants to hear their stories and wants to see EPS members involved in the community.

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“Our audience wants to see the heart of the Edmonton Police Service and when events are happening, our audience wants information from us,” she said.

The public is looking to the EPS to demystify what’s behind the scenes of policing and how it works, Misutka said.

Responding to emerging issues that become hot-button topics can involve explaining the EPS’s actions — and keeping attuned to public feedback and the social media buzz.

“Our team has to keep an eye on what’s coming across our social media channels, in terms of crime and different incidents in the community,” she said.

“Refinement is an ongoing process. We’re learning every day in terms of what the public wants to hear from us and what we’re seeing the effect of in terms of speaking to the need to connect, share and evolve as an organization,” she said.

Misutka was asked about how the platforms are moderated in the case of speech that borders on the hateful.

“We do monitor with a threshold approach. Our approach is to keep comments as open as we can, but when things approach abuse or hate speech, we do try to start to take those things off of our posts,” she said.

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Chief on social media

Social media and crime-fighting go hand in hand, EPS Chief Dale McFee said.

“Having communication on a regular basis, getting information out to our public is certainly important to the EPS and will continue to be important. We see a real rule as we’ve talked before, that we have to focus on our mainstream media as well. So we can actually have some of that validation of the truth. But to sit and think that we’re just going to let others dictate non-factual information — sometimes social media is not something we’re going to sit back and let that circulate because we have an obligation to get factual information out,” he said.

“Over the last three years we’ve asked the Edmonton Police Service to up their comms game. I think that we are reaping the benefits of that now.”

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