‘Pick up the phone and give us a call’ — Albany’s top cop vents Facebook frustration

Albany police officer-in-charge Sen. Sgt Grant Pollard is fed up with people posting about criminal or suspicious behaviour on Facebook instead of picking up the phone and telling police. The rise in community-run Facebook groups and pages in recent years has created another way for the public to share valuable information. However, Sen. Sgt Pollard said an increasing number of people were posting about potentially criminal matters on social media and reporting them to police either later, or not at all. He said finding out about an incident through social media, well after a member of the public had seen it, had become a weekly occurrence for local police. A recent spate of burnouts on local roads was an example of this, with an early call to police giving them a better chance of catching the hoon. “People put it on Facebook first and then complain to us about it later,” Sen. Sgt Pollard said. “We don’t take Facebook as an official reporting format. “People need to ring us directly at the time or as soon as possible.” Sen. Sgt Pollard said the general public had a huge role to play in helping police stop criminal behaviour. “Public reports are extremely important to us — it’s one of the lynchpins even for our basic investigations,” he said. “We rely heavily on community-minded members of the public to be our eyes and ears, passing info or evidence to us. “Any information, visual captures from homes, businesses or their phones are the central point of the majority of our inquiries into criminal and antisocial behaviour.” Sen. Sgt Pollard said some social media posts, especially in Facebook groups, could generate angst and anxiety in the community. “When these posts are put on social media and read by members of the public, they are quite often posts that are one-sided or ill-informed,” he said. “It creates a lot of angst in the community in relation to those incidents, and severely hampers our ability to conduct full and timely inquiries. I’d implore people to post facts — not assumptions or personal opinions based on assumptions.”