Southlake DPS: Social Media That Serves And Protects
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It all started with an interrupted CandysDirt.com content meeting during Thundersleet /Icepocalyse 2023. We were discussing ideas for upcoming articles, when somebody mentioned Shelby Skrhak’s witty compilation of The Best Weather Related Tweets We’ve Seen, The Thundersleet Edition, that had come out that day. The shining star of the article was a series of hilarious posts from Southlake DPS.
Meeting. Totally. Derailed.
The meeting pretty much descended into cackling, and things like, “OMG, I LOVE them!” and “Did you see the one when they …”
So later that day when Candy told me she thought profiling the Southlake DPS social media team would make a great story, and asked if I’d be interested in doing it, this particular fangirl could not say, “HECK, YEAH!” fast enough.
Now, I have followed Southlake DPS on Facebook for a few years, and not only do I find the content funny — sometimes tears-running-down-my-face funny — but I have admired the way they have managed to strike the right balance between humor and information. They know when to be silly and when to be serious. And in doing so, they seemed to be achieving what I had to assume was the goal: to keep people coming back for more. To get people actually reading police departments’ posts.
When I tracked down the social media “team,” I was surprised to find that it was just one person, Officer Brad Uptmore, the Public Information Officer for Southlake DPS. No marketing department, no outside firm — it’s an actual police officer doing this.
Now if I were a better fangirl, I would have already known this, as Officer Uptmore stars in many of his posts, but I had thus far been mainly exposed to some of the more epic crime-solving posts, some holiday movie remakes, and a traffic video or two, so I hadn’t yet seen the man behind the magic.
If you’re unfamiliar with Southlake DPS social media and think this doesn’t sound like a typical Department of Public Safety social media page, you are correct, and you’re in for a treat.
I did some research ahead of meeting Officer Uptmore, who took over the social media accounts in 2018. Due to the popularity of the profiles, there has been a fair amount of press, including an impressive mention in the UK’s Daily Mail. I noticed one thing he says again and again when asked about the secret to his success, “I just talk to people like they’re human.”
Well, ok, the writer in me harrumphed. It’s not that easy to achieve in a way that is as consistently funny, genuine, and simultaneously informative as he is doing it. (Did I mention that I manage social media for CandysDirt.com? Yeah. I must sit at the feet of the maker of Southlake DPS and learn his ways. (Editor’s Note: Brenda, you’re killing it. We love (actually) you.)
A Silver Tongue
I met Officer Uptmore at the training facility at 100 West Dove, and I wasn’t intimidated at all by the fact that he is like 6’6” and handsome and a cop and pretty much my personal hero at this point. But luckily, he’s the nicest, most gracious, and most generous person you’ll ever meet in your life and I could have talked with him all day.
Officer Uptmore (Brad, since we’re pals now) told me that the secret to his gift of gab, his ease with the word flow, stemmed from his childhood. Growing up, he was what his mom referred to as “husky,” and the kids called “the fat kid.” (Kids suck sometimes.) He developed a silver tongue to protect himself from bullies, always staying ahead of the joke. He molded that into the ability to be friends with everyone. So when, in college, he dropped 60 pounds and grew 6 inches, he’d already developed skills and a personality that would serve him well.
As a police officer, Brad says that silver tongue was his greatest weapon — being able to talk his way through difficult situations, de-escalating conflict, and talking suspects into handcuffs and out of dangerous positions.
It’s a unique gift, that I think must be part innate and part learned. He’s taken that highly-attuned ability to read the room, as it were, and apply the right nuance of communication from the street into the wild west of social media.
Everything Old Is New Again
Reading the room in this case means doing his research, and Brad is all about the analytics. Turns out I’m smack in the middle of his biggest demographic, so it’s no wonder I appreciate the page so much. He has a lot of fun with nostalgia in his approach to creating content:
“I’ve always taken a page from Don Draper from Mad Men with nostalgia. Nostalgia sells. It makes us feel good, makes us remember a time… Life is tough. When you go in the work force, when you have kids, we all dream that our childhood was so amazing — whether it was or not — man, it seemed so much simpler. And everything that’s old is new again.”
Officer Brad Uptmore, Southlake DPS
His approach is clearly working — and getting some national recognition. Mentos shared the spoof video Uptmore made recently based on the famous ad campaign from back in the day. IYKYK
A good lesson for all of us. 👍👮♂️ https://t.co/91fI6DBf06
— Mentos (@MentosUS) February 21, 2023
A Vision in Southlake
I was talking to a friend who does social media marketing before interviewing Uptmore, and he said, “You HAVE to find out who greenlit this. It’s just epic for any brand to take a risk like this, especially a police department.”
“All credit goes to the chief,” Brad says. He had a vision of where he wanted the messaging to go. Initially, he said he had three goals: 1) Humanize the badge, 2) Provide transparency, 3) Get people to pay attention.”
Police Chief James Brandon had a vision for community policing that extended beyond the policies and procedures of day-to-day operations on the streets, and into the messaging going out to a broader audience.
“If you remember the time when we started (2018), it was during some dark times in the country,” Uptmore said. “Officers were doing bad things. Bad things were happening. But bad things weren’t happening in Southlake because this is a professional department — look I came from the other side of the fence.”
Uptmore said this wouldn’t have been successful just anywhere.
“This was lightning in a bottle. There aren’t a lot of communities we could have pulled this off in. I couldn’t have done this in Irving, or Fort Worth, or Dallas,” Uptmore said. “Imagine that you have a silly video promoting some event you’re going to do, and three minutes later you have to post that some dude just murdered his children, and he’s on the run. Ninety percent of our crime [in Southlake] is property crime.”
Actually, Uptmore started his career with Dallas Police in 2006, where he worked for 10 years. “In Dallas, you show up at 7 p.m. [for your shift], and there’s a hundred 9-1-1 calls holding. And you go from call, to call, to call, and sometimes all you can seemingly do is put a bandaid on things.”
That’s when Uptmore realized the concept of community policing can help get to the root of the problem.
He told me a story about a Dallas woman who had repeated 9-1-1 calls because her alarm kept going off. When Officer Brad and his partner arrived to investigate, instead of just noting another false alarm and moving on, they stopped to figure out why this kept happening. It turned out the lady had a broken lamp that was triggering the alarm, so they went to the store and bought her a new lamp. “That felt good,” he said.
Uptmore eventually decided he was looking for a department that was already implementing the type of community-based police work he wanted to be doing. He was living in Roanoke, so someplace closer wouldn’t be a bad thing either. Southlake fit the bill, and they were hiring, so he started out as a police officer with Southlake DPS.
When he was hired, the Chief took note of the fact that he had been a Film/Telecommunications major with a minor in PR at Baylor University. At the time, a civilian was handling social media, and they were experiencing some difficulty with not being fully connected to the jargon and day-to-day life of the DPS. When the job eventually became available, they asked Uptmore if he was game. He was.
I asked if there was pushback at first. Were other officers worried about being taken seriously on the streets?
“We’re all in on the joke. I’m not going to punk you out,” he assured them. Uptmore himself was the “star” of many of his first video projects, and once things started to take off, and the other officers could see people were responding positively, they were ready to join in. And it has grown over time.
One officer in particular, Uptmore said, declared, “I love what you’re doing — I’m never going to do it, it’s not my thing, but it’s great.” Six months later, the same officer came back and said, “Hey, if you ever need anything, I’d be happy to help out — but nothing too zany.”
Building Good Will
As far as social media do’s and don’ts: Never aim for the low-hanging fruit like “police versus firefighters,” or National Donut Day (groan). Officer Brad says he looks for innovative ways to reach people with a message that’s always about safety and community.
But not every message is met with praise. Social media can be a harsh place, and as a government page, free speech is the name of the game — i.e., unless you break Facebook rules, you don’t get blocked or deleted.
“We used to post traffic accidents, to show where it was, how many lanes are closed, information the public needs to know, and blur out the license and people’s faces, etc. But we got some pushback on that, and we had a meeting about it and decided not to post pictures of accidents anymore,” Uptmore said. “We don’t want to be glamorizing someone’s worst day. There are pros and cons, but a good police officer can listen and change.”
A favorite series has become a holiday tradition, wherein, Officer Brad photoshops officers and firefighters into the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. This year, he switched it up by using some archival parade footage with some of the more senior (ahem) members. All in good fun. Inevitably, every year, he says, someone comments, “I watched the parade, I can’t believe I missed this!”
The Macy’s CEO was in town one year and actually spoke to Southlake’s mayor about how much he loved the posts. (So cool!)
Some of the most popular (and useful) posts are when the department receives security footage and employs social media to help solve petty crime. Uptmore’s talents are at their best here. He finds some nuance, like the hapless criminal who, after shoplifting at the local Home Depot did a, “Wheeeeee!” ride on the shopping cart through the parking lot. Here’s a recent post where the perp was found by Facebook gumshoes in a matter of hours:
What’s Next For Southlake DPS?
So is it working? Are Chief Brandon’s goals coming to fruition?
In 2019, Southlake DPS won a Silver Anvil, which celebrates the best strategic public relations campaigns of the year, as well as outstanding organizational excellence. A Silver Anvil is basically an Oscar in the PR world. They’ve won many awards since, but the real prize seems to be in community engagement, which is at an all-time high.
“At the end of the day we’re trying to find bad guys. One of the reasons that we keep trying to build the audience is because when something really bad happens: if a child gets lost or an MHMR patient gets lost, which has happened, or we need to find a bad guy who did this – it branches out, and the word spreads quickly.”
Officer Brad Uptmore, Southlake DPS
What’s next for Southlake DPS social media and Officer Brad Uptmore? Don’t expect to see him going anywhere anytime soon. He says he loves working in a department as familial as Southlake where the Chief knows his birthday and his kids’ names, and details like that about all the officers’ lives.
“I’ve had the offers. I’ve had big stuff thrown at me, and I’ve never in a million years felt the loyalty anywhere that I feel here … This is what I’m good at right now,” Uptmore said. “I know the Southlake police department, I know police work, and therefore I’m able to excel at that. Stephen King said, ‘Write about what you know.’
“Our hope is that we’re building goodwill over time. Over four years, we’re building good will because one day, something bad might happen in Southlake, and I need to cash that in, and I need people to give us an extra 5 or 10 seconds to say, ‘Southlake always tells us what’s going on, and we trust them.”
I think it’s safe to say that Officer Uptmore and Southlake DPS have done a pretty incredible job building goodwill in the Southlake community. All you have to do to test that theory is navigate over to their Facebook page and just try saying something snarky on a post. Southlake DPS fans are fiercely loyal, and they will come for you.
You can (and should) follow Southlake DPS on Twitter and Facebook @SouthlakeDPS.
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Fantastic article! Southlake DPS & Officer Uptmore are awesome!
Thanks for reading, Debbie! They really are!