If you follow police news - you'll know that since the de-centralized precinct system was put in place last year - you've seen precinct police giving interviews on the evening news more regularly. But, last week, word came down that a new beefed up police press office would be regulating, and in essence, restricting, those appearances. That sounded like bad news for the media and for the free flow of information which our viewers depend on.
And so, today, the senior command of the Eastern Division along with the three members of the new Community Public Relations Office, comprising Raphael Martinez who is now joined by Douglas Hyde and W-Corporal Hortense Hernandez - met with the media to explain that the new deal is not a raw deal - just information management, not control, they claim:
Douglas Hyde, Public Relations Coordinator, Eastern Division
"We basically exist to promote the reasonable of mutual understanding and cooperation between Eastern Division and the stakeholders especially the staff, the general public and the media as in gender continued public confidence and service. We are in the process right now of identifying police officers from each precinct in the next couple of weeks to participate in training in public relation and also in terms of interviewing skills and stuff like that which is very important for information dissemination to the general public when it comes to media interviews."
And one of the priorities of the new CPR office -as they call it - is to promote positive police activities and not just the usual cops and killers narrative:..
Douglas Hyde
"We realize that our programs and our activities working closely with the community is something that we want to highlight on a daily and weekly basis which we barely do. We barely talk about the successes of the police department's work, working with the community and with children and young people on a whole, so yes this move is definitely a proactive move to highlight more of success stories."
The new CPR team is in a new office and commits to sending weekend press releases which never happened in the past.
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