go my name is Ian Stewart and I'm the commissioner of the Queensland Police Service in Australia and it's an absolute pleasure to be here in Phoenix Arizona and commissioner Stewart one of the questions I had is in your speech here at today's conference uh it was curious you you brought up social media and how uh that the value that it has in law enforcement in your 40 years have you seen anything like that can you talk a little bit about what the value social media and the impact it's had on law enforcement absolutely I personally believe that the Advent of social media is one of the greatest challenges facing law enforcement across the world but at the same time I believe it's also one of the greatest opportunities about four years ago our department embraced social media we now have about 50 000 followers on Twitter but we'll have almost a half a million followers on Facebook it's one of the largest law enforcement social media sites in the world and that all came about because of a tragedy and a disaster that occurred those years ago and we had to embrace it because by providing a single point of Truth for the community that we that raised the confidence of the community in times of stress and Trauma so did you actually use it during the crisis to manage the crisis to get information out or get intelligence in from the community at the stop it was mainly one-way traffic out so we were providing huge amounts of information up-to-date information straight out of our crisis meetings to the whole of the state so that became the single point of Truth where we're moving rapidly now is to a social media presence that allows Community to come to us more often so while they can come and ask us questions we actually want them to also give us information intelligence and that includes video footage it includes photos much like the public reporting that happens every day right across the world so in terms of crime fighting and crisis management you've seen the value there what about can you talk a little bit about how you you might use it in terms of you know marketing or the brand and management for your department absolutely it's one of the most important things that all police departments have to to recognize that there are those out there who will continually strive to attack policing Brands to try and drive the confidence down in the community of the ability of police departments to manage and appropriately deal with all of those issues that are important to the community not just crime it's about Safety and Security it's about terrorism it's about being able to rapidly advise the community in times of Crisis so I think it's the responsibility of all police departments to really engage with their communities through this medium because that's what that's what about half of the population are doing every day and I'm talking about the younger people in our communities who use smartphone technology who use tablet technology and that's how they do their business that's how they interact with their friends Police Department should be no different from that thank you very much my pleasure