Tumwater officials push for more storytelling, social media to highlight community policing

Tumwater council members and police leaders on July 8, 2025 urged the city’s communications team to increase event coverage and social media outreach to better showcase community policing efforts and positive officer–community interactions.

Council members said a stronger storytelling effort would boost community awareness and trust; Tumwater Police Department leaders and the city's communications staff said they are increasing capacity to do that work.

Chair Peter Agabi and several council members praised officers’ visibility at recent community events and suggested the communications team coordinate with council members to amplify posts. "If the comms team is working with council members and say, 'Hey, we're posting — can you share that on your pages?'" one council member said, adding that coordinating shares helps build larger followings.

Chief Mason said the department is trying to improve its public-facing storytelling but that doing it well requires staff time and expertise. "A lot of that comes with, to do it well. It comes with staff time, and so and staff, expertise," Chief Mason said. He said Deputy Chief Gillis and the department are working to capture positive interactions, and that officers at the July 4 festival were directed to make positive contacts and hand out materials.

The city's communications specialist (Laura) said the department had staff taking photos and posting to Facebook and Instagram at the July 4 event. "We did have 2 people out there who were taking pictures and, posting to Facebook and Instagram while we were out there," she said. Nathan, a member of the communications team, told the committee the communications office is working collaboratively across departments to support event coverage and said he was "quite pleased" with current cross-department coordination.

Council members encouraged continued progress and asked staff to respond to constituent inquiries about related issues (for example, code-enforcement follow-ups) between meetings when possible. Communications staff said they will continue to attend events, collect photos and work with department leads to produce shareable content for council and the public.

There were no formal votes or ordinance actions on communications or community-policing staffing at the July 8 meeting; the discussion produced direction to increase event coverage and to return with further updates as capacity allows.