 Hi, I'm Raquel Lopez with the Denver police media relations unit We are speaking this morning with lieutenant Matt Murray on the use of our new social media lieutenant Murray. Good morning Good morning. How are you good? Can you tell us? How the Denver police department is using social media? Sure, we right now have a Twitter account a Facebook account Pinterest account and a YouTube account So we're all over the board on social media and of course looking for anything else that might come up where we can reach the public Some people are concerned that we are trying to circumvent the media by producing our own videos. What are your thoughts? You know that is not true at all. What we're trying to do is provide the public more information quicker Not at all to circumvent the media In fact, we recently had a terrible situation in which a mother shot three of her children killing two of them and then killed herself That day we did release several videos with a lot of information for the public But at the same time we did four press conferences We made both the chief and the commander of the investigations unit available to the media So we really view this as an additional source for the media and the public to get more information Great. So why does the Denver police department feel it is important to use social media? We started using social media in 2009 with Twitter. We're now up to eleven thousand people what we have found is this is Gives us the ability to connect with the public in a way that we have never been able to do before So for instance people who might not come to a community meeting might not call Might not send a letter or an email. We are willing to correspond with us back and forth on social media It really just gives us an avenue to speak to the public to find out what the public's thinking and to respond to their Desires and wants for information. Well, that's great. So what does it take to produce the videos? You know, it's really pretty easy. What we're using is we have a couple of Canon EOS cameras. They all have High definition video available, but we're moving to iPads and the iPads have 4g capability So we can literally take the iPad to a crime scene produce a video and edit and send it from the crime scene So it's not hard to do Clearly we don't have the professional capacity that the news does but what we're doing is providing raw information Accurate information and timely information And much more information then can be done in the 32nd newscast What would you tell other police departments about social media and how how it's working well for the Denver Police Department? You know, I think it's a fantastic tool It really has enabled us to reach more people also to find out quickly what the public's thinking Trust me when something's in the news they respond and they let us know what they think both good and bad It's also provided us another avenue to get more information to people So I think it creates a dialogue that didn't exist before. I don't think we would go back This is a fantastic way to communicate information with the public Is there any other information that you would like to provide to the community on social media? You know, I think one of the things that's very important about social media and what we're doing is that we don't Editorialize we give you raw information and let you decide what it means and that's pretty important to us We don't think the public wants The news interpreted for them We think they want to just hear what we have to say and then interpret that for themselves So we're committed to just providing facts and having an exchange of information not editing information Thank You lieutenant Murray stay tuned for future updates on Facebook Twitter and YouTube