TORONTO CRIMESTOPPERS: OUR PAL CONSTABLE SCOTT MILLS IS FEATURED IN DIGITAL JOURNAL FOR HIS WORK ON SOCIAL MEDIA.

KJ and Constable Scott Mills

The use of Facebook and Twitter has made a huge impact in crime fighting in Toronto, so big in fact that the 'bad guys' know it and want it shut down. On Wednesday someone posted extremely inappropriate material to the Facebook page for the TPS.At the time of the post, Constable Scott Mills, the man behind the scenes, was at a funeral. He came back to work to discover that the photos, which were of graphic, brutal and pornographic matters. They had been posted to the page by someone with a bogus account.

Toronto Police Intel discovered the photos but not before they had been on the page for a few hours. Because of that person's actions the page no longer allows for photos and video to be posted by the public. That move was a hard one for Mills.Constable Mills is one of the nicest men you will ever talk to. His dedication to serving the people of Toronto is non-stop. Scott works with the Public Information Unit. The unit is behind the press releases that journalists use to begin their reports on crime in the city. The unit is also behind the department's social media networking. For the past six years Scott has been the key player for that part of the work.Six years ago Mills teamed up with Crime Stoppers.

The move was a bold one for the police and for Mills personally. If Crime Stoppers didn't work out online then it would be unlikely for the Toronto Police to move into the social media age. While the program partners with the police it is not part of the Toronto Police Service. Crime stoppers is a group of concerned citizen volunteers serve on the Board of Directors to oversee the Toronto Crime Stoppers program. The TPS provides them a coordinator to manage the day-to-day operations and talks the program School Crime Stoppers but that's their limit. The program celebrated their 25th year in Toronto in 2010.

He posted the first video on YouTube in April 2007 launching a new way for the site to connect with the public. From YouTube came a page on Facebook to a Twitter account and a presence on Vibe.TO.Mills efforts paid off. In 2009 there were a record number of tips that lead to arrests. One-third of the more than 10,300 tips were drug-related.By 2010 Toronto Police had a good view of what social media networking could be doing for the city. Mills left Crime stoppers in April right before the G20 Summit to become the Social Media Officer for TPS.While the tips on crimes is invaluable to the police it's the stories that don't get in the media because they never happened that are most telling of the use of the program."Since I started with Crime stoppers I can say that we have stopped crimes from taking place.

Two school shooting didn't happen because of the tips we received and countless teenagers didn't commit suicide because we were alerted through social media networking."Getting those tips in takes a lot of work. It's more than the 40 hours that Mills is paid for. He works hard, often in the background because he knows that the program is making the streets of Toronto safer."I sleep better at night because of this work. It's very productive and very time consuming.The possibilities of how to use social media in policing are endless, it's a huge tool. The TPS is putting a lot of faith into this program."

Read more: http://digitaljournal.com/article/297670#ixzz0zpcFJsSI