The Hometown Police Department serves the people of Hometown, Illinois, a community of approximately 4,200 people in the south suburbs of the City of Chicago. The Hometown Police Department is responsible for law enforcement duties in Cook County and is comprised of 33 part time employees and 5 full time employees, divided into Patrol, Investigations, Administration and other special assignments. Social Media Comment Policy
Posts/comments on a Hometown Police Department (HPD) managed social media web site containing any of the following inappropriate forms of content are not to be permitted and are subject to removal by the Chief of Police or his/her designees:
a. Personal identifying information of any person, except as allowed under the Freedom of Information Act;
d. Defamatory or personal attacks;
e. Threats to any person or organization;
f. Posts/comments in support of, or in opposition to, any political campaigns or ballot measures;
g. Solicitation of commerce, including but not limited to advertising of any business or product for sale;
h. Conduct in violation of any federal, state or local law;
i. Encouragement of illegal activity;
j. Information that may tend to compromise the safety or security of the public or public systems; or
k. Content that violates a legal ownership interest, such as a copyright or trademark, of any party. Repeated or egregious violations of this policy may result in being “banned”, or disabled from the ability to post further comments. Additionally, we ask that friends/family of HPD personnel do not “tag” personnel (linking those police employees to any personal social media accounts they may have) in posts/comments on Hometown Police Department managed social media sites, both to protect police personnel privacy and for safety concerns. The Hometown Police Department (HPD) use of social media is provided as a public service to increase communication with the community. This page is not constantly monitored, and should never be used to report crimes or requests for police service. The HPD disclaims liability for ads, links, videos, promoted content or comments accessible from any external content or comments does not imply endorsement by the HPD. The HPD cannot edit any posts made on its social media sites, however the HPD reserves the right to remove or hide comments that do not adhere to our post/comment policy.
