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04/04/2018 08:30 AMAbout 10 weeks ago, Guilford Police Sergeant Martina Jakober wondered if adding a little humor to Guilford Police Department (GPD) Facebook posts would increase community reach. She took a shot and started sprinkling in what she calls “a little Martina spin.”
From putting out a warrant for Old Man Winter to reminding residents that bad guys like to go “shopping” in unlocked vehicles, her informative posts with a funny slant started grabbing more likes, shares, and views—sometimes more than 10,000—and Martina knew she had her answer: Folks like it when you lighten up.
“There’s always room for growth, and I’m always thinking, ‘How can I improve the things that I do?’” says Martina, who’s curated the four-year-old page since inception. “And this was one of them where I said, ‘You know what? I think I can do better, and I think people will like it.’ So I took a shot in the dark, and it seems to be blossoming, which I’m really happy about.”
Responses to the recent rise of funny posts on GPD’s Facebook page are “blowing up” in the form of huge numbers and positive comments from the community. Police Chief Jeffrey Hutchinson says the growing popularity of the page is helping GPD to be even more responsive, transparent, and communicative with citizens.
“The feedback from the town is fantastic,” he says. “It’s raised awareness on issues that are important to the town. With her approach, she’s able to balance the good news, the bad news, and humor, and lighten it up a little, when appropriate. It gets more people comfortable with the police department and adds a level of humanity. It makes people more likely to communicate with us, and to understand we’re all trying to get to the same end: Keeping our community safe and making it a nice place to live.”
Martina took on GPD’s social media when taking on the department’s Crime Prevention and Community Policing programs in 2014.
“One of the first things I brought to the chief was the proposition that we really should have a social media footprint out there, because it’s just the way people communicate now,” Martina says. “Sometimes it’s positive, sometimes it’s negative, but to reach more people and to get information out to the public, we really need a social media footprint. And he was on board with that.”
Martina also took on building up interest in GPD’s Citizens’ Police Academy, as well as increasing community outreach by working collaboratively to develop programs such as Coffee with a Cop and Project Lifesaver.
To start up the GPD Facebook presence, Martina first found training on administrating a “limited public forum.”
“It’s different than running a private personal page,” she explains. “There’s information you need to know; there are legal ramifications; there’s all sorts of stuff that you have to be wary of. I had to learn all that, and I’m still learning it. It’s not an exact science.”
Posts on the page can include photos or news from police beats (like a recent store smash-and-grab), community issues (from temporary parking bans to downed wires or blocked roads), scams or other suspect activity, news of community outreach workshops and programs, official press releases, and more. All of it needs to be weighed and balanced before Martina adds that funny spin GPD Facebook followers come looking for. They won’t find funny attached to serious police issues or significant crimes, she notes.
“It depends on the actual case,” says Martina. “If there is a press release, we put it out, but if there’s no release, we’re not going to address [the case] until the information is released.”
What the page does address is breaking down barriers between citizens and cops. Even in Guilford, where the community regularly shows it cares for its cops, feedback on the GPD Facebook page shows it’s building more awareness among citizens that police are people, too.
“It gives people a nice, comfortable feeling,” says Martina. “When I run the Citizens’ Police Academy, there are a lot of people who come to class who’ve never really had any police contact. Then they find out we’re human, and they realize we do have a sense of humor—some of us drier than others—and we can interact with people. Sometimes, the uniform creates that barrier, but I’m a mom, I’m a sister, I’m a daughter. I definitely can relate to just about anyone’s situation.”
Extending that comfort level helps spread the message that police are here to help, she adds.
“People are sharing a lot of the posts. It’s rewarding when you see that stuff and realize you reached some people today. On patrol, we may deal with 15 people in a day. Here, I can reach out and touch so many more and get the information out there,” says Martina. “What I like, too, is that people feel comfortable enough to message the page. We don’t encourage anyone to report specifically, but if you have a question, like, ‘Hey, about the noise ordinance in Guilford, can you give me some of that information?’ I can respond, ‘Sure, here are the parameters.’ So it’s an easy way for people to have an open communication with the police department, and I like that people feel comfortable enough to do that.”
Martina does her best to respond to messages in a timely manner, jokingly adding the caveat, “if I’m awake!” The majority of her GPD Facebook monitoring and posting takes place when she’s off the clock.
A 15-year GPD veteran, Martina was hired as an officer here in 2003, making a lateral transfer from Tuscon, Arizona, where she was an officer for four years. She’s served 10 years as a GPD patrol officer, two years in the Detective Bureau and was promoted to sergeant in 2017.
Martina and her husband (also in law enforcement, with a different agency) moved back to the shoreline from Arizona when their first son was born, to be nearer to Martina’s family. These days, all three of the Jakober boys are interested in police careers, says their mom. She can remember wanting the same thing when she was young, too.
“Since I was about eight, it was one of my goals,” Martina says. “I’ve always had the desire to help people. I was a lifeguard growing up, and I did a lot of things where I was involved in community-oriented programming, so it was a natural transition for me.”
With the GPD Facebook page, Martina’s found another way to help.
“One of the reasons I became a cop is that I wanted to help people, and I wanted to help people help themselves, so it’s something that’s very personal to me. I’m one of those internally motivated people, and I wanted to make it a better community experience for people with the police department,” says Martina. “The Facebook page also helps with another aspect of law enforcement, which is incorporating the community to be champions for themselves.”
Last week, for example, GPD Facebook put out a post about reports from community members being targeted by a scam claiming to be from Microsoft.
“We told people, ‘Hey, this is happening right now, you could be affected. These are some things you need to look for; here are some ways you can handle this,’” says Martina.
With a little “Martina spin,” a bit of humor really helped put the message across. She topped the post with a tuxedo-clad, demanding toddler and the phrase, “Honey, just hang up—no way those guys are from Microsoft.”
“I enjoy it, and if you don’t enjoy your work, you’re just miserable,” says Martina. “As police officers, we’re usually dealing with people on bad days, and sometimes, we don’t make it any better—that’s just the facts, we do what we have to do because that’s the law. We hope that the things that we do are working to make lives better for people, and a lot of times we do, but it doesn’t end up that way every day. So it’s nice to do these crime prevention and community police programs and Facebook, and to get in touch with people on good days, and have a lot of positive contact with people. It develops a really nice rapport, and then those people will share the information they’ve learned, too.”
Find Guilford Police Department on Facebook to follow its community posts.