[Baltimore Citizen’s Academy] TJ Smith —Media Relations Office
If you know anyone from the BPD, its probably Commissioner Kevin Davis. But a close second behind him is Communications Director TJ Smith. If you type ‘BPD press conference’ into Google Image Search, TJ Smith shows up in most of the pictures.
His office of eight employees is the one that is behind the BPD Twitter and BPD Facebook pages. They also manage posting all press conferences to Periscope.
Smith was a career police officer before he moved into his role doing media relations, first with Anne Arundel Police and then with Baltimore Police, long enough to have seen how Twitter, Facebook, Periscope and other communications technologies have revolutionized how the police communicate with the public. Before they were options, people relied on TV and the newspaper to get all of their news, which meant mainly the evening news and the morning paper.
Today, BPD is able to stream their complete news conferences, which gives the public the ability to see the release in its entirety, including followup questions. If you watch the news or read the paper, there is usually only 10 seconds out of a 30 minute conference that is used verbatim.
He bemoaned the fact that with the media, sometimes the mantra is ‘if it bleeds, it leads’. That means that in a city of over 300 homicides, much of his time involves talking about homicides and shootings. He has learned to be very blunt and straightforward in the way he talks. Most of his speaking is unscripted, and he only uses notes for statistics that might be asked for.
As the public face to the department, he also gets all of the love, hate and everything inbetween for the department. He also realizes that there are many people on either of the spectrum of beliefs on the police, many of which will never budge from their beliefs. When he talks to the public, he mainly focuses on speaking to the middle majority. That applies in person, or dealing with comments on the internet.
This discussion was in early December, so it was shortly after the major news stories on Detective Suiter. Smith lead the effort of releasing information about the murder and the ongoing investigation. This involved the press conference the night of the murder (including the commissioner, mayor, SAO, doctor, and many others), the announcement of his death the next day, questions about the car accident, why the neighborhood was locked down for so long, the questions about his planned testimony before a grand jury the next day, the rumors about his suicide, the commissioners request for the FBI to take over the investigation, and the later announcement that the FBI had no additional information and would not take over the investigation.
Those were the public things that he did, but if you listen to those videos, there are instances where Smith tells a journalist that he will need to get back to them with more information after the press conference. So between all of these press conferences, his office was also managing all of these requests for information, as well as putting out information about the other crimes that are going on in the city.
