CRIME REPORT TWO-TIMED:

ON SEPT. 21, 1988, Dallas police officers responded to a call at 6257 Lakeshore Drive. The victim, 41-year-old Jill Bounds, was supposed to meet a friend. When she did not answer her door, officers entered the house. Bounds was found deceased in a bedroom with blunt force trauma. Leads developed at the time did not result in an arrest. Twentysix years later the case remains open, documented as case No. 609517-W.

This is the kind of information neighbors can find on the Dallas Police Department’s new blog, dpdbeat.com, which launched in February to help police disseminate important information.

“We did that for several reasons,” explains Maj. Max Geron. “No. 1 was because it’s another avenue to be able to release information to the public and the media at the same time.”

Historically, police have relied on partnerships with local media in order to propagate information to the public, but there is a finite amount of space and time that news outlets can dedicate to the police beat.

Although media partnerships are still important to the police, social media has given the police department a platform that allows it to skip the middlemen and release as much or as little information as needed, directly to the people who need to see it.

There’s a wealth of information available on dpdbeat.com, including a list of cold cases, such as the aforementioned case of the East Dallas woman found dead in her home.

“Before, there was really no other place where you could have gotten this stuff,” Geron says.

“There were some news agencies that would do an occasional weekly feature on a cold case, and they’d go out and interview a detective or whatnot, but there was no way — that we could see — for us to put this information out there,” he says. “And the blog gave us a place for that.”

Aside from the blog, the Dallas Police Department is ramping up its use of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

In August, the Dallas Police Department launched a YouTube series called “In Depth.” In each episode, Sr. Cpl. Melinda Gutierrez interviews a detective about a case, going over “pertinent facts and information to get a fresh set of eyes in the community on the cases,” Geron says. “To see if there might be additional information to help us solve the case.”

Because of the video series, the police have already had at least one instance where additional information helped move a case along, Geron says.

So far they have filmed two episodes of “In Depth,” and the media relations office has been studying up on what it can do to make the videos as professional as possible.

“We’re a content provider,” Geron says. “We have access to certain information some of which we can release, some of which we can’t. But this way, you get to talk to the detective, who has firsthand information about the case. He or she knows what is acceptable for release and what might jeopardize the case were it to get out. We want them to feel comfortable with what’s going out to the public.”

In addition to “In Depth,” the Dallas Police Department YouTube page features a series called “A Day in the Life,” which gives a behind-the-scenes look at various departments in the police department. There are also several press conference recordings available.

The website and social media pages also allow the Dallas Police to disseminate information during emergency situations, Geron points out. The department is working on gaining more followers to increase its reach to the community.

Since the department launched dpdbeat. com, it has received almost 1 million views.

The department has more than 54,000 followers on Facebook and 42,000 followers on Twitter.

The Twitter account in particular has been a game changer for the police department during breaking news situations.

“By utilizing Twitter from the scene of an ongoing incident, we are able to deliver factual information — or at least as close to factual information as possible — immediately,” Geron says.

“When we talk to people, they say, ‘Hey, you guys are leading the way on social media,” he concludes. “It’s just been revolutionary. And it’s fair, and it’s balanced distribution of information, and in my line of work that’s imperative.”

LINKS TO KNOW: dpdbeat.com facebook.com/dallaspd twitter.com/dallaspd youtube.com/user/dallaspolicedept

Remembering the shotgun squads

Inthe mid-1960s, armed robberies became a problem at convenience stores, restaurants and liquor stores, according to Sr. Cpl. Roderick Janich, who curates the Dallas Police Department museum.

Robbers would walk into a store, shoot the clerk at point-blank range and then empty the register. The death toll was rising, and the Police Department intended to stop it.

Lts. Herman Holloway, Jay Finley and Harry Dean Thomas came up with a solution: shotgun squads.

Patrol o cers would work overtime — a competitive status among o cers — to aid shotgun detail, Janich says.

The shotgun squads involved dangerous stakeouts during which o cers would camp out for hours at a convenience store or restaurant, often in less than desirable conditions, and wait for a shooter.

Although it seems like an undesirable job,

Janich says the o cers usually jumped at the opportunity for overtime and extra money.

Sometimes the o cers would sit in dark alcoves, storage rooms or freezers, and they joked that the process was “seven hours of boredom and three seconds of sheer terror when confronting a hijacker,” according to a retired sergeant, T. Wafer, who picked up shifts with the shotgun squad whenever he could.

Wafer was eventually promoted to supervisor, surveying possible shooting locations.

“I had walls and two-way mirrors installed at the sites’ expense,” Wafer says. “They wanted the protection for their employees. We had chairs installed and other things to make an o cer comfortable in these long, boring stakeouts.”

When the time came, the o cers didn’t hesitate to shoot the robber where he stood.

Today, o cer-involved shootings are met with scrutiny by the media, the public and the

Police Department, but things were di erent in the 1960s.

“Back then, they shot felons,” Janich says. “You came in, boom, they shot you. They didn’t mess around. Di erent time, di erent place.”

Once word spread, the fear that there may or may not be o cers camping out at any given convenience store was enough to cause the number of armed robberies to plummet.

Although shotgun squads no longer exist, a police presence at convenience stores still deters unwanted activity.

“The concept is still used today for crime prevention,” Janich says. “Convenience store clerks will hang old police jackets in their stores, just to give the idea: ‘Is there a police o cer here?’ We went through a phase one time where we’d put cardboard cutouts of police o cers in convenience store windows. And, of course, decoy cars in shopping centers.”