MEETING DATE: 10/9/2018
DEPARTMENT: SHERIFF'S DEPARTMENT
DEPT HEAD/DIRECTOR: Darren Thompson, Sheriff-Coroner
AGENDA ITEM PREPARER: Kellie Kennedy
SBC DEPT FILE NUMBER: 110
SUBJECT:
SHERIFF'S OFFICE - D. THOMPSON
Approve contract with Cole Pro Media, LLC commencing July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2019, in an amount not exceed $30,000.00.
SBC FILE NUMBER: 110
AGENDA SECTION:
CONSENT AGENDA
BACKGROUND/SUMMARY:
The San Benito County Sheriff’s Office would like to enter into a contract with Cole Pro Media for assistance with our media messaging and social media presence. Currently, Cole Pro Media assists with the following Sheriff’s Offices in California; Santa Cruz County, Monterey County, San Mateo County, Marin County, Sonoma County, Tuolumne County, Stanislaus County, San Joaquin County, El Dorado County, Amador County, Nevada County, Placer County and Solano County. Online communications for our office involves more than just social marketing and these messages need to be carefully crafted. Cole Pro Media can help us ensure that our critical updates, safety announcements and celebratory posts reach the right people at the right time in the right way.
Cole Pro Media brings years of media experience with law enforcement agencies to help us do all of these things correctly. As our office strives to maintain our transparency, Cole Pro Media will help us properly uphold the privacy protections legally afforded to our community members. Cole Pro Media is a trailblazing social media manager that has worked with dozens of cities, sheriffs’ offices and police departments throughout California since 2013. With extensive experience as on-camera journalists and social media mavens, they offer a variety of services that can be catered to the specific needs of our office. These services include content management, content creation, staff training and crisis communication.
Our Office is just beginning our important presence on “Social Media” platforms. This brings many positives to our office and our community, but it also poses some challenges. Many of these challenges are making sure we are doing things legally, ethically and tastefully. Social media provides an opportunity for our office to put out information on critical incidents. By creating excellent communication tools, we will be able to create dynamic, reliable, up-to-the-minute social media channels where we are able to focus on the facts. When our community is able to count on our Social Media presence to keep them in the loop, they will look to us for “news” – not a third party.
As we enter into this new arena, and continue to put our news out the “old fashioned way” in the format of press-releases, Cole Pro Media can give us the guidance and direction to keep us safe and effectively communicate with our community. They will help us craft and release messages pertaining to updates on emergency situations such as natural disasters, breaking news about matters of public safety, news and stories about local heroes and other aspects of public interest, warm wishes to community members on holidays including important traffic and safety reminders and also BOLs, Amber alerts and other updates that can assist investigators in their cases.
Financial Consideration
This is a twelve month contract commencing July 1, 2018 and ending June 30, 2019. Services were used in July and August on a month-to-month basis in order to determine whether the services would be beneficial to the agency. Cost will be divided between the Sheriff's Operations, Jail and Grants budget units.
BUDGETED:
Yes