AMERICAN POLICE BEAT: MAY 2017 23 Twitter’s a two-way radio If anyone wanted a tutorial on de-escalation and digital-verbal Judo, here it is B efore there were social media tough guys, there were “telephone tough guys.” You know the type – they scream and bellow as long as they’re not face to face with the person they’re yelling at. But the Internet has turned a lot of us into self-styled critics. They take to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and post photos and videos of their targets and write stuff like, “Check out this idiot!” In Waco, Texas recently, a local cop became the target of a guy working on a “cops are lazy and don’t do jack” type meme. According to the Hous- ton Chronicle, Twitter user rg2pdml tweeted a photo of a Waco police officer look- ing down at his phone with the caption, “@WacoPolice I hope you guys have good benefits this looks like a rough job.” Generally speaking, these kinds of attacks f r o m t h e peanut gal- lery are best ignored. “Don’t feed the trolls,” as they say these days. But when officers and agencies do respond to at- tacks on their integrity and whatever else, it’s important to stake out a position on higher ground, so to speak. So a few hours after the twit tweeted his tweet, he heard back from the Waco PD. Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton personally wrote the re- sponse to the commenter and defended the officer, who works directly under him. “He was on personal vaca- tion time taking off to work a part-time job to make ends meet,” Swanton wrote in a lengthy Facebook post. “He is also our U.S. Mar- shal task force representa- tive and is continuously on his cell helping to track the worst of the worst criminals, yes even when he is ‘off- duty.’ He arrests numerous felons every month keeping our entire community safe from some extremely bad guys.” Swanton smartly pointed out that the officer was likely texting a loved one to let them know he is OK as po- lice families are dealing with the reality of an increase in attacks on cops. “You see for us, we never know when we may have to answer that final call,” he writes. “Do we have a rough job, you bet we do but we wouldn’t trade it for any other one out there!!” That’s a classy response. It would have been easy to tweet an insult like “What would you know about it? You stupid civilian…” But because Swanton took the high road, the cops got support from Twitter users while the original poster got shellacked. “Unless you or a loved one works in law enforcement, you have no idea what it’s like and have no right to judge them,” Lee Gerow commented. Another user tweeted back at the original post saying, “So you’ve never used your phone while at work? Get real!” Why did I try and make fun of that cop? I look like an idiot. RAIL-MOUNTED, 800-LUMEN LIGHTS AS TOUGH AS THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO RELY ON THEM. The TLR-1 HL® packs a wide 800-lumen beam at the end of your weapon, enough to illuminate every corner of the room. It fits handguns and long guns, and is designed to switch between the two in seconds. And its unbreakable, scratch-resistant, gasket-sealed lens and shock-proof LED mean it can take anything you throw at it down to -40ºF. Need more aim? The TLR-2 HL® adds a high-powered red laser to the mix, and the TLR-2 HL® G boasts a direct drive green laser, easily visible even in broad daylight. Flash, bang. STREAMLIGHT.COM