The Westminster Police Department found out about an assault that allegedly occurred at an area dog park not through a direct tip, but rather a post on Nextdoor.
Westminster Police Department Investigator Cheri Spottke said while social media is great for getting the word out about things like this, it does have some obvious drawbacks.
“We’ve gotten in the habit as a society of talking about [it] on social media, and sharing it, but we’re not sharing it with a police department,” she said.
According to the Nextdoor post, the writer’s housemate was walking her dog and baby at the Westminster Hills Dog Park on Tuesday. It is accompanied by a photo of the alleged perpetrator.
Spottke said she originally learned about the incident through a private Facebook message to the Westminster PD Facebook page.
The original Nextdoor post generated multiple shares and comments on the app. The problem? Police couldn’t see it because of Nextdoor’s restrictions on government entities that restricts them from seeing community conversations.
Spottke said when she learned about the Nextdoor post via Facebook, she had to find a creative way to read it.
“So now, I have to backdoor from Facebook into Nextdoor, and it’s a lot of work for us to backdoor those instead of people contacting us from the frontend,” Spottke said.
After receiving the message on Facebook, Spottke said she checked for a police report on the assault. Nothing came up, so she had to verify if the post was even true.
And that’s a problem police are facing more and more.
“Citizens do get alarmed, and they have every right to be alarmed, that’s why we’re asking instead of continuing to spread it before you hit that share or report or whatever that button may be, contact your local police department and see if it’s true and if we even know about it,” she said.
In the Westminster case, police were able to track down the woman behind the original Nextdoor post and get a statement from her.
Now, they’re looking for the man involved.
Police have extra patrols in the Westminster Hills Dog Park due to the incident.
Contact Westminster police if you see anything suspicious.
