CRANBERRY TWP — The township police department is increasing its use of social media to get the word out regarding potential suspects and incidents.

Lt. Kevin Meyer said residents are latching on to Cranberry’s Facebook page and helping to spread information.

The department has been using social media for some time but has only recently ramped up its efforts to reach more people.

“We’ve never before utilized it in this capacity,” Meyer said. “We saw other agencies in the area being successful with it so we decided to give it a try to see if it might work.”

Meyer said the new initiative is already working.

He said police this month posted a picture and status update of a suspect in an investigation. It didn’t take long for that message to reach more than 10,000 people.

Social media has just become one more tool to help police get information out.

“Now we can post a picture of a suspect or a wanted vehicle, and it’s something we feel people can use to help us get a tip or make an arrest.”

Meyer said there’s no harm in casting a line to “see if we get any bites.” There haven’t yet been any arrests because of social media, but that will likely change soon, he said.

“We’ve gotten a lot of tips but no arrests,” he said. “We’re getting a lot more visits to our site than I expected, so it’s doing well.”

Manager Jerry Andree added the township’s demographic tends to be on the younger side, and those residents frequently use social media.

Cranberry for years has been using social media to promote events, programs and to notify residents of any large projects occurring. It only made sense to expand that to the police department, he said.

“We’ve been using social media across all functions of our operation here in the township because we know our folks are using social media to communicate, and we want to communicate with them in avenues that are consistent with our demographics,” Andree said.

The township’s Facebook page has about 600 “likes,” Meyer said.