Social media is not the way to report a crime

When a crime happens, there is a proper way to report it to the police.

And it’s not through social media.

Chief Joe Aikens, Sidney Police Department, urges citizens to contact the communications center or reach out to the police station when there is trouble.

“If there’s an emergency, we’d like you to call 911,” Aikens said. “If it’s a non-emergency, you can call 254-5515 or -2880, or dial the Sheriff’s Department number.”

Social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are not effective ways to report crimes.

“We don’t have somebody monitoring those 24 hours a day, so reporting your crimes on one of those social media sites is not going to guarantee that you’re going to get a police response,” Aikens said. “They’re nice tools to talk around, but if you need the police you need to be calling our communication center because we’re not always going to respond to a Facebook post.”

Once a call has been placed with the communications center, a dispatcher sends the information via radio to an officer.

“They’ll assign an officer the call and they’ll respond to whatever the incident is,” Aikens said.

These calls are all documented.

“It’s either documented in a notebook entry in our dispatch history or a full complete incident report is written on it,” Aikens said, “depending on the nature of the incident.”

Not only is this procedure effective, such calls help the SPD follow crime trends in the community.

“Are there certain amount of accidents happening in a certain location? Are there a higher number of theft cases in different parts of the community?” Aikens said. “Things of that nature.”

Incidences are more swiftly resolved when crimes are reported directly to the police.

“If people aren’t calling in their crimes, or calling in the fact that their being victims of crimes, it’s hard for us to develop patterns of where the crimes are occurring,” Aikens said. “I always ask that people, no matter how small an incident is, they at least call and make a report through our communications center. It may not warrant a long form report, the person who’s calling in might think it’s a waste of our time, but it’s not a waste of our time.”

He added, “Every incident that occurs out there is important to us.”

An example of this occurred last year, Aikens said, when several cars had been broken into across the community.

“We ended up catching those people in that incident, and recovered a lot of stolen property. Minor properties like binoculars, watches,” he said. “But because not everybody that was a victim of those crimes reported it, we can’t get their property back to them.”

Online posts about criminal activity does reach the SPD, though.

“Our officers are like everybody else. They’ve got their own Facebook accounts. They see some of the comments and postings out there,” Aikens said. “But we don’t have somebody who specifically sits and watches Facebook for victims of crime.”

He added, “We look into the incident. It’s crime. They’re trying to reach out. They’re just not doing it in the right way.”

An example of this is people who post online that they were being followed on the streets, instead of reporting it right away.

“That would’ve been a perfect time to get on the phone with a communications person and say, I have someone following me around,” Aikens said. “The dispatcher can keep you on the phone until we get an officer there to make sure you’re safe.”

To report a crime, call the Sidney Police Department at (308) 254-5515, Cheyenne County Emergency Communications at (308) 254-2880, or Cheyenne County Sheriff’s Department at (308) 254-2922.