There are a few social accounts you need to follow around town: Carroll ISD for school news, Southlake Town Square for local events, Southlake Style – hopefully – for lifestyle content and Southlake DPS for city and safety updates.
Southlake DPS's Facebook page has a noble purpose: to serve the public and push out content that locals need to know about their town. But after Public Information Officer Brad Uptmore took over the police department’s social accounts in February, things got a bit more entertaining.
Whether you have followed along since the “GURL, CALL ME” cry or found the account after its recent pumpkin spice ticket video, followers can keep the laughs going by scrolling through the @SouthlakePublicSafety feed. Now, the page has surpassed 30,0000 followers, which is on the way of exceeding the city's total population. So not only Southlake residents, but also fans from around the country are tuning in to see what Officer Uptmore will be up to next. For those who thought he would be a one-hit wonder with the “Hey Gurl” post, Officer Uptmore is constantly on the hunt for creating more engaging content that will keep followers invested in their pages.
“The ‘Hey Gurl' post was obviously the igniter, and the worry there was people might think we were a one-trick pony,” Uptmore says. “You see some of these viral darlings that have one amazing post, and then nothing else, so I didn't want that to happen to us.”
He works to fill the Southlake DPS Facebook and Twitter pages with relevant and relatable information, and the community has really become accustomed to their particular kind of humor keeping them on their page for longer.
“I'm in my mid-30's, and it seems most of our audience is right around there as well, and to me personally, nostalgia is one of the strongest emotions. Will you pay more attention to a Traffic Enforcement post if it's a mundane text block or if it's in the design of an NFL logo? Are you going to help us look for a bad guy if it's written blasé with cop verbiage and you get bored after the first sentence? Nope,” Uptmore explains. “So I constantly strive to use the voice I've chosen and look for those little tidbits in each case to get people to pay attention.”
He knows that attentiveness is the real reason their page is so valuable. When he needs to find a suspect quickly or needs to warn locals to avoid an area, followers will be in the know.
“The safety and the BOLO (be on the lookout for) messages only work if there's an audience to see it and share it,” Uptmore says.
One of their most viral videos introduced their fans to an array of local officers. Their lip sync video introduced locals to the people who stood behind the badge and let them show off their personalities in a way that's often kept distant from typical police encounters. And it wasn't just Southlake residents that got a kick out of the video. Other departments were the first ones to rag on each other's lip syncs.
“I always love seeing other departments around the country join into our antics, start a dialogue, or repost our content. That's why the Lip Sync Challenge was so important… it humanized the badge,” Uptmore says. “We can say that police officers are people too until we're blue in the face, but letting everyone see it up close and personal whether it be dancing, lip syncing or sounding like a dying cat echoing in dark alley like Detective Green did, really showcases that point.”
The latest series of posts, the one that all started with a cone that was run over at a local school, became a citywide project full of mock sympathy ribbons, cone funds for the fallen cone's family and a fake funeral for the O.Cone. And while the spiral made us laugh, Uptmore takes those moments to see the impact the local police department is able to have on the area.
“It started so simple and innocent from a masked, ‘Hey, please don't run over the cones in a school zone,' and it is still running with 1.65 million views,” Uptmore says. “People around the world literally are paying attention to cones now and their purpose, based on a single post. The whole Southlake community is to thank for that!”
As for what's next for the amusing page, Uptmore is constantly churning out new ideas that will keep us laughing – like a citywide scavenger hunt and potential celebrity appearances in upcoming videos. But he's also working on content to keep Southlake safe as we move closer to the holidays.
“Lastly, we'll be trying to focus on DWIs and distracted driving leading into the holiday season, recruiting videos, and safety messages all in a relatable and easy to understand way,” Uptmore says.
So you can say a lot of things about local social media, but there's one thing that rings true for the Southlake DPS page: It is working tirelessly to serve its community.