Putnam County Sheriff’s Office back in control of Facebook page
It had been on to Plan B for Putnam County Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer Scott Ducker.
Through frequent posts employing a combination of information and tongue-in-cheek humor, the PCSO corporal had built the department’s Facebook following to more than 20,000.
And then in a moment it was gone.
On Nov. 18, the page was hacked by a gaming platform and Ducker no longer had control over the page, which had soon turned on monetization and had changed the name from “Putnam County Sheriffs Office Indiana” to “Street Boxing.”
As documented by the Banner Graphic at the time, Ducker initially got no support when he appealed to the tech giant.
So the sheriff’s office moved on, starting a Twitter feed (@PutCoSheriff) and a new Facebook page (Putnam County Sheriff Indiana), but with not nearly the followers.
Even with an initial push to garner new followers, the new Facebook page’s approximately 3,200 followers pales in comparison to the old, not to mention a paltry 135 followers on Twitter.
But the story wasn’t over at that point.
The Banner Graphic article got the attention of WISH-TV in Indianapolis. The ensuing WISH-TV video got the attention of Facebook.
On Dec. 13, Ducker got a call from Bridgette Arnold, who is the law enforcement outreach manager for Meta, Facebook’s recently rebranded parent company. The reception from Arnold was 180 degrees from what Ducker had gotten dealing with the business management side of Facebook’s customer service team.
“When Bridgette Arnold saw the video she wanted to speak to me about it,” Ducker said. “Right off the bat, she was super apologetic. She said, ‘You shouldn’t have been treated this way. It’s a big deal if law enforcement is hacked.’”
Ducker concurs, as it could have been a much more dangerous situation if, rather than turning the feed into a gaming page, the hackers had begun sending out fake public safety alerts or contacting, harassing or even scamming people under the guise of being a law enforcement agency.
After the initial conversation with Arnold, things moved quickly.
“She put me in contact with her team, and later that night they had restored access,” Ducker said.
The work has been ongoing, as the team from Facebook attempts to scrub all remnants of the takeover from the site. This has proven difficult with some of the livestreams posted by the hackers, but the efforts have continued.
Ducker has nothing but good things to say about the law enforcement division team.
“They’ve been incredibly helpful,” Ducker said. “Bridgette Arnold and the law enforcement division have kind of changed my outlook on it. She’s even said if I have problems, I can just email them and they’ll address the problems.”
With access back, Ducker is “trying to get it as normalized as I can,” while temporarily maintaining two department Facebook pages.
That won’t last long, though, as Ducker is attempting to slowly merge the two pages in the coming weeks.
Content is being posted to both, but Ducker has been using the new page (Putnam County Sheriff Indiana) to repost things from the older page (Putnam County Sheriffs Office Indiana) in an effort to funnel followers back to the original.
Anyone who unfollowed, unliked or blocked the old page is being encouraged to reverse that action at this point.
“In a couple of weeks, we’re going to start tearing the new one down,” Ducker said.
Even with his good experiences recently, Ducker still has frustration over the initial interactions with Facebook regarding the issue and knows it’s a black eye for the tech giant.
“Both articles reached a lot of people. It just doesn’t look good on Facebook,” Ducker said. “I still stand by what I said before, but I do give them credit that they have a law enforcement division. They were willing to reach out. They took care of us.”
Now his hope is that Facebook can do more to let police agencies know about this team that can help them address such issues.
“For smaller agencies, I think it would be very prudent to have that outreach and let them know there’s a division that can help them,” Ducker said.
He said Facebook officials have expressed the same desire to promote the service among law enforcement agencies.
Ducker, who also manages the Roachdale Police Department Facebook page, was also working through an issue on that front, as the page was also hacked and had been streaming “South Park” episodes.
Both issues have arisen despite Ducker using two-factor authentication and all the other recommended security steps.
He said he’s been told to change passwords often, follow other security recommendations and to reach out if any problems arise anyway.
“I’m actually pretty happy with the way they treated us on this one,” Ducker said. “It’s a learning experience for me. I had no idea they had a law enforcement outreach program.”