Reflection on Social Media Case 6: Basketball Cop Blog Post

A police officer makes a decision that is far from the expected norm. This case study really sparks the conversation about the power of social media. When a noise complaint was made about a group of kids playing basketball I assumed the worst outcome possible from this story. The cop coming into the storyline and instead of getting after the kids, but engaging with them was not what I expected. This is a great story, but how did it receive so much attention?  Social media was the avenue in which this story got to the world. This is important because this is an example of a positive story going viral. It is viral because the ‘players’ did not have a fan base previously.  When the second video was released from the police department it was no longer viral because they had a preexisting fan base. This Article by time shows how the story was rapidly spread from source to source. The story got more attention from the first instance, then it did from the second found Here.      

I think that this whole situation is great! First, the situation itself of the police officer playing with the kids to give them a different perspective of law enforcement. And second,  the way social media brought attention to such a positive story. The impact of the attention was great for the police station and for law enforcement in general.

As far as legal and ethical concerns I am not sure if there are any concrete problems to what happened. I wonder what the reaction was of the people who made the noise complaint. Legality is tricky with this situation. The officer did not carry out the request of the noise complaint, but also found that the situation was not threatening.

The most interesting part of this story for me what how it turned into a statement. The hashtag  #letkidsbekids was created as a reaction. This hashtag let to a larger conversation about law enforcement.