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The public perception of law enforcement has undergone considerable change in

the past few years. Those who were once promised to serve and protect communities

have now fallen from grace in the eyes of many Americans, so much so that violence

against the police has increased at an alarming rate and become a mainstay in popular

culture. Much of the reason for this negative perspective towards the police rests with

the media, as the public relies on various media outlets to shape their worldview and

keep them informed on the goings-on in their world and community. Because of this, a

working relationship between the police and media is essential to a properly functional

relationship between the police and their community.

For six weeks over the summer of 2017, I had the privilege of interning with the

Media Relations Office of the Charles County Sheriffs Office to gain knowledge and

experience in the field of my major public relations. My duties with the Media

Relations Office were largely what one would expect from a public relations official

namely During my time with the CCSO, I gained several insights about how a media

relations department functions, the pivotal role that it plays in a community and how

best to bridge the gap between police and civilians. My time with the CCSO gave me

several insights about the field of communication and public relations, specifically the

power of social media, while along the way reinforcing my ideas about the field, bringing

surprises about my choice of study that I had little prior knowledge of and serving as a

solid strengthening as to my decision to pursue a career in public relations.

The biggest insight that I noticed during my time with the CCSO was the sheer

importance of social media when it came to the everyday duties of the Media Relations
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Office. Every morning, one of my superiors would post a good morning message to the

Charles County community that was usually quite personal in nature; while some of the

messages were simple updates as to what the CCSO was doing that week (hosting

events, performing traffic safety checks, etc.), often the messages functioned as more

of a blog post that shared amusing anecdotes, words of advice or simple bits of

encouragement.

These short, daily messages proved to be the most popular of the posts on the

CCSOs Facebook page. Everyday these posts received hundreds of likes and dozens

of comments from citizens across the county, usually commenting positive thoughts

about the CCSO and the role that it plays in the community. What I initially saw as a

somewhat informal, but endearing series of messages proved itself to be something

much deeper a bridge connecting the CCSO with the civilian populace. With concise

posts like this every morning, the community knew that the police were their friends,

making the role of officers considerably easier.

The power of social media was further enforced by the photo albums that I

collaborated on and the brief video features that I produced for the CCSOs Facebook.

Every summer, the CCSO sponsors three sports camps that sees School Resource

Officers serving as counselors and coaches to local youth. To provide visibility for these

camps, the Media Relations Office is responsible for photographing and videoing the

camps and posting the product on social media.

As part of my duties as an intern, I was tasked with creating short, 30-second

promos for each of the camps and posting them on Facebook. These videos, though
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brief, proved to be immensely popular with the Charles County community, garnering

well over a thousand views each. Again, this showed that social media is a key tool in

showing the lighter side of a police department, as it can more easily depict the positive

impact the departments have on a community without the burden of media bias. Not

only this, but showcasing community service efforts such as this serves as a means of

humanizing officers and showing that they are not simply responsible for apprehending

criminals.

In addition to general insights regarding the field of communication, there were

several moments during my internship that reinforced my pre-established ideas

regarding public relations, namely the importance of timeliness and concise writing and

keeping a consistent social media presence. My internship, however, also proved to be

surprising in multiple facets as well.

During my time at Salisbury University, I was taught that the whole way to write

for both journalism and public relations was through the rigid rules of Associated Press

style. From my first days as a freshman, I purchased my required AP style handbook

and treated its word as gospel as my various Communication Arts professors drilled into

my head that certain rules must be applied always including proper capitalization, no

Oxford commas and stringent rules on what titles can and cannot be capitalized.

When I sat down to draft my first press release with the CCSO, however, I found

that AP style is not the only way to go about writing in public relations. After I sent the

press release to Diane Richardson, my supervisor, for approval, she almost immediately

sent it back with some markups of things that she felt needed to be changed. Among
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these changes were her wanting every word in the title to begin with a capital letter and

to lengthen it to be just over one page.

Hearing her feedback was a bit jarring to me, as her requests for my press

release contradicted two major lessons that I had previously been taught about writing

press releases specifically that they should only be a single page in length and the

only capital letters in the title should be for the first word and any proper nouns. Though

it went against AP style, they were nonetheless the preferred stylistic choices for the

CCSO. This served as an interesting lesson, as it showed that what is taught in a

classroom is not always the same way that something is handled in a work setting.

Another surprising bit of information that I learned because of my internship

came about through scanning the CCSO Facebook page. The reviews for the CCSO all

proved relatively positive, with many users commenting their positive experiences with

the department or singing Sheriff Troy Berrys praises, but during my browsing I came

upon a span of roughly four months in 2015 where every review seemed to be overtly

negative. Upon further inspection, I saw that many of the negative reviews were not

even from citizens of Charles County or the state of Maryland, and yet they all seemed

to be referencing the same incident one in which an officer got into a heated

exchange with a couple, supposedly over the mother breastfeeding her child in public.

My curiosity piqued, I asked Diane about the incident and what made so many

people feel so strongly about it. Diane responded with an exasperated laugh and said

that the real cause of the officer pulling the couple over was due to the child being

improperly restrained in a moving vehicle, not because of the mother breastfeeding. Not
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only this, but much of the outrage on social media was directed at the couples race, as

they were both African American. Given the current political climate, many people were

quick to react due to it fitting the narrative of racial bias in law enforcement, something

that was fresh in Americans minds because of the Ferguson, MO and Baltimore, MD

riots. The shoddy media coverage from less-than-reputable outlets on the internet did

little to qualm these peoples anger, as they simply parroted buzzwords and condemned

the CCSO for supposedly racist behavior. Diane concluded by saying that the CCSO

never offered an official statement, as it would have fallen on deaf ears and that people

would simply forget out the incident in a short span of time.

This experience was surprising to me for two reasons. First, the way in which the

CCSO responded (or, rather, chose not to respond) shows that not every incident

requires a direct response, even when the accusations against an organization are

particularly grievous. Secondly, the fact that there was such animosity contained to such

a short time frame shows how quickly perceptions can change. As a public relations

representative, it is ones duty to always make sure that an organization maintains a

positive image, even during times of crisis or scandal. In this case, however, the popular

mood shifted in a rather short span of time, making a response from the department

unwarranted. This taught me that in the field of public relations, just as in other facets of

life, sometimes less is more.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, I learned that often media outlets are more

concerned with feelings than facts. The outlets that reported the misinformation

regarding the reason for the couples encounter with police cared little about reporting
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the story honestly and instead focused more on pushing a faulty narrative and sewing

outrage. This reinforced what I had feared was simple hyperbole many news outlets

simply exist as beacons of outrage to fuel clicks and internet relevance rather than

educating the public. Just as President Trump so famously exclaimed, our society is

overburdened with fake news.

Because of this internship, I can safely say that I am quite comfortable with my

choice of study at SU. I was admittedly hesitant to pursue my studies in public relations,

as I felt that the field was perhaps too broad for any concrete career to develop, and

had misgivings about the amount of work that I would be forced to shoulder. After this

internship, however, I no longer have any fear of finding employment as any

organization whether it be a police department, business or non-profit requires

someone to get their message out to the public and work hard for a positive image.

The work of a public relations official, as I learned through my internship, can

also be remarkably varied. I genuinely did not know what to expect on certain days

when I came to work and that was often exciting. Some days I was sent to a sports

camp to take photos and video, while others I was tasked with staying in the office and

writing press releases and updating social media. Irrespective of what my day consisted

of, everything that I did had the perfect balance of familiarity and freshness, ensuring

that no one day at work was the exact same as the other. It is this spontaneity and

uncertainty of the future that keeps a job exhilarating, something that I look forward to

having in a career.
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Additionally, though I found that certain situations may arise that require

abnormal work hours, the life of a Media Relations Officer in a police department is

relatively normal in its 9-to-5 daily work schedule. While I am currently undecided as to

whether I wish to pursue a career in public relations for a police department, I am

certain that I want to pursue a career in public relations.

During my time as an intern, as outlined above, I was tasked with multiple

projects including covering events through pictures and film, updating social media and

writing press releases. Of those, my proudest achievement would have to be the promo

videos that I made for the various summer sports camps that the CCSO sponsors

annually. These videos, though concise and relatively simple in structure, proved to be

surprisingly popular on social media and caused a fair deal of traffic on the CCSO

Facebook page. Additionally, each video garnered dozens of shares, thousands of

views and a great deal of positive feedback. While it was rewarding to see something

that I produced get so much attention, it was even more rewarding to know that my

efforts to paint a positive view of the CCSO had paid off and that hundreds of people

were exposed to the great things that the department does. Additionally, I was thrilled to

see that a simple skill that I learned through a class that I took at SU, a skill which I

though little of at the time of learning it, had a useful real-world application.

My internship was not without regrets, however. About midway through my

internship, there was a criminal investigation into the sexual misconduct of a Charles

County Public School employee named Carlos Bell, who was found to be in possession

of child pornography featuring himself and several students. Naturally the release of this
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information caused a great deal of uproar in the local community, with numerous

outraged citizens loudly voicing their anger against both the Board of Education and the

CCSO for not apprehending Bell sooner.

The whole week during which this news broke was extremely hectic and stressful

for my superiors, and there were multiple moments where I felt powerless to help with

the situation despite assisting in drafting a press release and handling social media for

unrelated matters concerning the CCSO. My superiors both thanked me for my help

with handling the crisis and my work during the ensuing press conference, but I was left

feeling that I could have been of more use to them. While this was most likely due to my

low position in the office and the severe gravity of the situation, I still cannot help but

feel I personally could have done more to help in the damage control during this time.

Despite not being able to help as much as I would have liked during the Bell

saga, the whole experience did still prove to be an important learning one for me. The

biggest takeaway that I had was that numerous groups work off one another, in this

case CCPS and the CCSO. Not only this, but I also learned that sometimes a crisis can

occur and there not be anyone to blame; Bell was hired by CCPS after passing an

extensive background check and the CCSO was only capable of apprehending him

after the damage that he caused had been done all in all, there was nothing that either

party could have done to prevent this that would not also count as infringing on privacy

and general civil liberties. Despite it not being either partys fault, however, it was still

our responsibility to address the public as to what happened, assure them that their

concerns are valid and that another incident like this will never happen again. If I am
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ever to handle another public relations crisis in my career, I know that I will look back on

my experiences during this time for guidance and reference.

Overall, my experience with the CCSO was as informative as it was rewarding. I

learned a great deal as to what makes a police department run smoothly, how to handle

a crisis and how to build a healthy relationship between civilians and law enforcement.

Not only this, but I was also relieved to see a community so receptive of its police

department and sheriff, especially in the turbulent world that we live in. With the tools

that I have gained through my internship experience, I am confident that I can achieve

great things in whatever path my public relations career takes me.