Whether it's on social media, in the news, or shared by word of mouth, we see and hear a lot of information circulating every day. It seems like everywhere we turn, people are competing for attention. Drama, controversy, and scandalous headlines always gets the most attention, which is why it spreads so quickly.

The problem is that when something gets repeated often enough, people start to believe it's true whether it is or not. While some information is accurate, much of it is incomplete, taken out of context, misleading, or simply untrue. Two words to best describe this are misinformation and disinformation.

Misinformation is false or inaccurate information that is shared by someone who believes it’s true.

Disinformation is false information that is intentionally created or shared to mislead people.

As police officers, we hear lots of opinions, assumptions, and rumors. Some of it makes us stop and wonder where some of the craziness comes from, but we also realize that many people just don't know where to find reliable information or who to ask. Rather than relying on information that gets passed along and filtered by multiple people, we’d like to create more opportunities for residents to hear directly from us.

That's why over the next few months, we're planning a series of Community Conversations throughout the city. These informal gatherings will give residents a chance to meet members of the police administration, ask questions, share concerns, offer ideas, and have honest, down-to-earth conversations with us.

We'll be hosting these conversations at different locations and times to make them accessible to as many people as possible. As dates and locations are finalized, we'll share them on our social media and website. If your church, organization, or community group is interested in providing a space to host one of these conversations, please call us at 570-327-7540.

We hope you'll join us, whether it’s for 10 minutes or an hour. Sometimes the best way to cut through the confusion is to just sit down and have a back-and-forth conversation. Hopefully, we can dispel some myths, provide some clarification, and build understanding. We want to hear everyone's perspective, so don’t hesitate to stop by if you tend to be skeptical or disagree with us because you’re exactly who we want to talk to.