GARDEN CITY — Cory Stambaugh was sworn in as Garden City’s new police chief in August, and since he’s taken the position, the department hasn’t changed much. That is, until Dec. 28.

Virtual ride-alongs are not uncommon in police departments across the nation, but in December, Garden City had its first. The idea came from Cpl. Matt Biagi, who has been with the department since 2021.

“I’ve had this idea since I got here, really, to revamp our social media as a department,” Biagi said. “I thought that it would be a really good way to show the public about how we do everything, and not just like traffic enforcement or writing tickets.”

Biagi brought it up, Stambaugh green-lighted the idea and videos were posted to the department’s Instagram and Facebook pages within two weeks.

The videos are all about building the public’s trust in the department and remaining a transparent organization, Stambaugh said.

“Part of it is to try to explain what we do. It shouldn’t be a mystery to the citizens that we serve,” Stambaugh said.

In a virtual ride-along by posted by Garden City police on Dec. 28, a series of short videos featured two traffic stops performed by officers, one of which involved someone with a warrant out for their arrest; an area check of a residence; officers working with GCPD K-9 Kano on various training techniques; and a question-and-answer session between viewers and an officer.

Garden City’s police department isn’t the only one doing virtual ride-alongs.

Boise Police Department has done several social media ride-alongs. The most recent ones were posted on Jan. 3, a couple of days after Garden City posted its ride-along clips. The department also does “tweetalongs.”

Granted, it could be considered a stretch to call either department’s videos to be pure virtual ride-alongs, because they’re not livestreamed. The dozens of videos were posted on Instagram stories and then saved to the archived front page. Body cam footage and video of close-up interactions during traffic stops are not a part of BPD or Garden City’s videos.

For BPD, social media outreach like ride-alongs are meant to provide traffic education to the public, Cpl. Kyle Wills said.

“While it’s important for us to be out there and getting people to slow down through traffic stops, it’s just as important to notify the public and try to educate them on what safety looks like and why we promote safety,” Wills said in an interview with the Idaho Press. “Our biggest complaints we get from residence is really traffic, and that’s where we really focus that outreach.”

Wills has three social media accounts he uses for outreach: Instagram (@motorcop652), Facebook (Kyle Lel) and X (@kjwills652). Those accounts date back six years, Wills said, and their sole purpose is community outreach.

“It’s very traffic-focused, very educational,” Wills said. “It puts a little bit of a human spin on the role of law enforcement in police work.”

According to Patrick Orr from the Ada County Sheriff’s Office, the county has previously done “tweetalongs,” live-tweeting during a patrol shift.

“It seems like what BPD and GCPD are doing is applying that same idea to Instagram,” Orr wrote in an email to the Idaho Press. “We don’t have any current plans to do something similar on Instagram, but it wouldn’t be difficult to do that if we wanted to.”

The county does not have any current plans to duplicate what Garden City is doing on Instagram, Orr said. Both Boise and Garden City police departments are planning on having more social media ride-alongs but do not have firm dates planned.