Lorain Police Department deactivated its social media accounts, considers app to engage residents

LORAIN — The Lorain Police Department's Facebook and Instagram pages have been temporarily deactivated. Lorain police Lt. Jacob Morris said the move Monday was due to derogatory comments that had inundated the Facebook posts. Those comments included linking to outside sites, YouTube links, and other off-topic comments from fake or out-of-area accounts that overshadowed comments from local residents and required constant monitoring from officers, Morris said. Morris said the page had become labor intensive, requiring supervision from officers around the clock while residents' comments were often lost in the shuffle of accounts from Florida or California. He said one of the department's posts was about taking children fishing, and the comment writers brought up an incident in February when officers attempted to stop a group of teens for jaywalking on West 27th Street, resulting in a complaint from one of the teen's parents, Morris said. While it's the commenter's right to post their opinion of Lorain police, even from Florida, it shows the fallibility of the social media site, Morris said. "People are allowed to be critical," Morris said. "We can't delete comments because they're critical … one of the problems is we're getting people from across the country (commenting on posts)." The Instagram page was moved to private, and listed no posts or followers as of Monday evening. The move to take down the Facebook page came after Chief Jim McCann sent an email to city officials warning them of how it had "become out of control and offensive." In his email to City Council on May 31, and shared with The Chronicle-Telegram, McCann said officers had been reading comments and "are becoming demoralized and the lack of open support from Council members and the residents of Lorain, who are not the ones flooding our social (media) with slurs and derogatory statements. All the derogatory comments are from outsiders who know nothing about our issues in Lorain," he wrote. He called it disheartening that City Council didn't defend officers "who are out there every day busting their a---- to get the violence under control in this city." "Our cops are aggressive and they look for criminals before they can victimize our residents," he wrote. McCann declined to comment on the email. Several Council members replied to the email thread, expressing support for Lorain police. Councilman Tony Dimacchia, D-at large, wrote he had been nothing but supportive of the police. "I'm a little disappointed that I have to read an email claiming I don't support our officers because I choose not to engage in the social media drama and nonsense," he wrote. The page was set up to communicate with residents, providing news releases or highlighting officers' work in the community. But there are other options to provide that information, Morris said. One of those is the Police App, which the department is discussing. The app would allow LPD to provide directed push alerts to residents when there is an increase in crime in their area, such as a spike in car or home break-ins. Costs associated with the app were not immediately available Monday. Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com.