Facebook transforms police into community-friendly force

LUCENA CITY—The police in Quezon province have turned to Facebook, the popular social media platform, to help change the lawmen’s archetypical anti-hero image before the community.

Senior Supt. Ronaldo Genaro Ylagan, Quezon police chief, said all local police stations in the province’s 40 towns and two cities, including the Quezon provincial public safety company and the provincial police headquarters, now have their own respective Facebook accounts.

“Through posted photos, messages, public information and advisories, likes, comments and reactions from friends, our local police force has become community-friendly,” Ylagan said on Friday.

Through the Facebook page, policemen in every town become friends to almost everyone in the community like students, civic groups members, religious, local government officials and even ordinary citizens who have Facebook account, Ylagan said.

“The transformation of the typical police image from their past intimidating figure into a friendly and approachable fellow in the community is really inspiring,” Ylagan said.

The police Facebook page also serves as conduit of valuable information and suggestions from community members.

“If the information is sensitive, the citizens send it as private message and our FB (Facebook) administrator treats is as confidential,” Ylagan said.

He said the FB pages have also been serving as platform for their regular monitoring on the performance of local police stations.

The police superiors in the provincial, regional and Camp Crame, could easily have access to the situation at the local level for faster assessment and decision-making, Ylagan added.

The first FB account was opened by the Quezon police headquarters based in Camp Nakar here, early last year.

It was immediately copied by every local police station even in the far away island towns of Panukulan, Burdeos, Polillo, Jomalig, Patnanungan, Perez, Alabat, and Quezon.

Ylagan said the local police get their Internet connection through commercial telecommunications broadband.

This Christmas season, the FB pages in all police stations have been replete with photos of lawmen distributing gifts to children, sponsoring Christmas parties to elementary schools, day-care centers and senior citizens.