Police Officer Preparation & Law Enforcement Resource - Archive

This question is mainly pointed at dispatchers/calltakers, but anyone is free to answer.

How do you respond to media requests for information when they initially contact your dept? Do you have a designated public relations officer, and do they issue press releases?

A recent event has me wondering how other agencies do it, since the policy i'm most familiar with is, No Comment, call back and ask the Chief on Monday between 8a 5p type of thing.

Any replies are appreciated. :)

I work in Comms.

We get calls all the time from media. We play dumb.

They must ring every morning to see if anything happened overnight. We have a media branch and they know it. If they are dumb enough to ring us at Comms, then they are obviously dumb enough to believe me when I say, "Nothing has happened".

:D

In my last department, same thing...every morning they would ring and every morning we would tell them nothing to report. You would think they would get sick of it. I guess once in a while some rookie would say something that would make the papers as a cool quote, and usually that rookie would get there butt kicked

If we do receive any calls from the media directly into dispatch we refer them to the front desk of whatever of the 4 towns we dispatch for. We answer no questions at all.

This question is mainly pointed at dispatchers/calltakers, but anyone is free to answer.

How do you respond to media requests for information when they initially contact your dept? Do you have a designated public relations officer, and do they issue press releases?

A recent event has me wondering how other agencies do it, since the policy i'm most familiar with is, No Comment, call back and ask the Chief on Monday between 8a 5p type of thing.

Any replies are appreciated. :)

News Media "Hi this is Jan from Fox 25 news, is there anything going on?"
Me "Yes as a matter of fact there were 2 shootings, 1 rape and a house fire."
News Media "Oh really?"
Me "Not really, I just got tired of saying no to you all the time. If there was anything you know we'd fax you a news release."
News Media "OK Thanks anyway."

Most of the media understand that we can't/won't tell them anything. We have a policy that we fax a news release and then if they call us we read the news release to them over the phone if need be. Other than that we give no infprmation over the phone to anyone for the simple reason that we can't verify who they say they are.

Our dispatch center refers them to us and I refer them to our PIO :)

Each department has their own policy regarding media inquiries. Generally, the answer to generic, every day calls from news stations asking "if anything's going on" is No.

If they are inquiring about a specific incident, they are transferred to the incident commander, appropriate PIO, or told to reference the press release if one was sent out.

We try to live by the motto, "Do not say or do anything that will get you on the 11 o'clock news."

We tell them to call our News Line.

Damn, wish we had a PIO or a News Line... that'd be nice. :p

P.I.O.'s deal with the media

We have a couple designated PIOs but in their absence we just refer everything to executive management. Also, if we do a press release or something like that, the PIO provides us a copy that we can fax to newsmedia in the event they haven't already received it.

Oh...and we've had a few media calls where they try to milk us for a comment or for information - our lead PIO is very good about putting those types in their place.

I feel sorry for the news children who have to make these calls every NIGHT.

To the best of my knowledge, the only thing they have ever heard when calling in the evening is that there is nothing to report.

(I accidently released some information to them one night. I confirmed that it was snowing)

I feel sorry for the news children who have to make these calls every NIGHT.

To the best of my knowledge, the only thing they have ever heard when calling in the evening is that there is nothing to report.

(I accidently released some information to them one night. I confirmed that it was snowing)

I agree... they call in knowing they're not going to get anything, but yet they continue to call with, I suppose, the faintest amount of hope that they'll get someone that will tell them something juicy. :p