Introducing our new Public Affairs Officer!

Public Affairs at a police department looks simple from the outside until you see the moving parts up close. We sit down with Officer Steven Klakowicz as he steps into the Public Affairs Officer role, and we get honest about what the job really is: social media management, media relations, internal coordination, stats and reports, awards tracking, podcast production, and storytelling. Officer Klakowicz will be replacing Officer Mercedes Simonds in the Public Affairs Office and will take over as host of the Cape CopCast with Lisa Greenberg.

We also talk about what changes when you come from patrol into an office role, and why that transition can be exciting instead of limiting. Public Affairs lets us create work, get out with units, and highlight the parts of policing most people never see. That matters for community trust, but it also matters for recruitment, because applicants and laterals may judge a department by what they find online. When our content reflects real culture, real standards, and real people, it becomes a practical recruiting tool rather than a highlight reel.

Along the way, we dig into why long-form audio like a police podcast gives more context than short videos, and Officer Klakowicz shares what he wants to build next: bite-sized mini documentaries, more ride-alongs, and more officer spotlights that show what the job looks like day to day. We wrap with a new recurring idea, “Klak's Facts,” because sometimes a little humor and a “useless” word fact is exactly what makes public safety communications feel approachable.

Transcript

New Role In Public Affairs

SPEAKER_03 0:04

Welcome back to another episode of the Cape Copcast. I'm one of your hosts, Lisa Greenberg.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

And I'm Officer Mercedes Simons. We did make up the public affairs office, but now we have a couple changes. We do. We have our new public affairs officer, Officer Steven Klakowitz.

SPEAKER_03 0:20

How are you? Thank you. Soon you're going to be sitting in this seat because she's leaving. Yeah and you're taking over.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

It's exciting. I'm excited. I'm looking forward to it. We're we're sad to see you go, but um, I was able to get this opportunity and I'm looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_03 0:38

It's you're gonna crush it. It's really exciting. Um, so if you recognize Officer Steven Klackowitz, he has been on the episode uh on the podcast a couple times before. Um, this time we're gonna kind of talk a little bit about your new role, um, what got you here, how you ended up here, all that good stuff, and what we do here in public affairs is kind of like a reintroduction. I think a lot of people obviously who listen to the podcast know we host this podcast, but there's shout out more to it.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

That's the only person in my life that I know like watched it pretty regularly was my mother-in-law, Beth, who's a my grandma watches too.

SPEAKER_03 1:14

So hi, Mima.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

If you're here.

SPEAKER_03 1:16

Um, you're gonna have some fans too.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Yeah, I'll get the word your wife, your son.

unknown 1:21

For sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Yeah, everybody's gonna start listening and uh watching, and um, you know, that we'll we'll be able to to go for that route.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

You listened to it before. Are you still gonna listen to it now that you're gonna be on it?

SPEAKER_00 1:34

If I'm gonna have to hear myself all of the time, we'll see. I'm I'm gonna have to hear myself when we edit it and put it all together, but I'll still listen.

SPEAKER_03 1:41

I'm like, I'm a part of it, so I don't actually ever listen because I'm listening as we record it, and then I'm listening as I edit it. So I never really go back and give it a listen. But I uh I'm glad that you have in the past. For sure. That's how you ended up in this job. We knew he would be good at it because he pays attention to the podcast.

What Public Affairs Really Handles

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Yeah, public affairs is like very dynamic for those of you who don't know. Usually I feel like in any position, whether it be in our building, in uh a corporate job, whatever it might be, if it's not your job specifically, you probably don't know exactly what someone else does. And you're like, what do they do all day? And I think some people just think that public affairs just plays on social media and puts stuff on there. And that's just like a very small fraction of what we do is managing social media, doing uh managing interviews with the media, media questions of our legacy media partners.

SPEAKER_03 2:37

It's funny because when I was a anchor and reporter for before this, I thought, like, oh, public affairs, their job is to answer media inquiries. And I'm sure like coming from patrol, you're like, oh, public affairs, their job is to like post on Facebook about road closures. But we do a lot of different things as you are learning now. Uh, you've been training with us for like the last couple weeks to get ready for the gig. Um, and there's a lot to it. There's a lot more admin work than I thought there'd be reporting of stats and you know, quarterly reports and keeping track of awards and all that good stuff. So um it's definitely a comprehensive job. There's the internal tasks, there's the social media, there's the podcast, there's the video. Um, are you feeling overwhelmed yet?

SPEAKER_00 3:22

No, I'm okay. I I had an idea of of what you guys do. I had an interest in this. We had talked about it and um I had the opportunity to to participate in stuff that you guys did. But yeah, a lot of people will just see it as the social media stuff, or if the news uh wants some information about a story, you know, we we do that a lot. But yeah, there's a lot that I'm seeing that um, you know, if it a lot of stuff that comes to the chief's office and if they don't we know who to go to, it it it might fall on us, which is fine. We can we can handle that and we can we can do anything with it. But um it's it's definitely it's it's different than being on the road, like I'm used to. I did five years on patrol, uh I was an FTO, and um this is just a completely different pace. So um getting used to that and uh being in an office instead of out in my car and out on the streets is uh it's a change, but I'm liking it a lot.

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Yeah, I think the best part is that we have the opportunity to create work for ourselves and we don't just have to be stuck in an office all day. We can go out and we can go to whatever events that we're doing, we can go see what patrol's up to. There's so many different aspects of the police department that we get to highlight and cover that gets us out of the office.

From Patrol To Office Life

SPEAKER_01 4:35

Definitely. That's why it'll be really interesting when I go to professional standards. Um I'm going to the professional standards bureau to be a background detective. So it's essentially walking people from, you know, the uh when they apply all the way to their final offer. So it covers the the fitness tests, the oral board, all like everything, the polygraph, background, everything in between is you're walking people through the process to hopefully hope that we have the best applicants on the table and we're the we get them in the door. Yeah. But I'm excited because I feel like we've done a lot with recruitment and public affairs and trying to advertise our department and to make it look like somewhere that an applicant would want to go. And it'll be interesting to take the people that have seen the things that we've posted on social media and seen the things that we've done to then seeing if they're a good fit for us and if we're a good fit for them. So for sure.

SPEAKER_03 5:30

It's like the work that we're gonna continue to do is gonna benefit you. So you almost still have like a stake in public affairs. And what's interesting with your background and coming from patrol, like those are the guys that you would be interacting with, the new hires and everyone, you know, because when you start, you start on patrol. So it's like you have a stake in it as well because you want the best people, and so it's interesting how like interrelated it all is.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Yeah, we we had the opportunity to talk to our um our new recruits that are just starting pre-deployment yesterday and give them an idea of what we do and and how they can work with us and we can work with them. And one of the things that I said to them was um, you know, with us being in charge of the social media, we I want to make you guys I want to make everybody in the department look cool. I want to highlight you guys. I I don't want to ever do anything to embarrass you uh because we know we have people that transfer from other agencies around the country because they want to come work for us and um to get a sense of what the department's like, they're looking to our socials and um that's how we can use it as a recruitment tool in conjunction with PSB to um to try to attract the the best talent because if somebody sees that it looks like a good place to work and they have a good culture and the they have good equipment and it's like a vacation spot.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Yeah, it's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Yeah, to be able to work where you vacation. That's what I did. I used to come down here and pretend to be retired. And um I just you know, my wife and I had the opportunity when we both worked from home, we said, Why why don't we just work from anywhere? And we did it. Um and I wanted to do this job up until that point, I just didn't want to do it in the snow. So as soon as we moved down here, yeah. But one of the things that I did was looking through to see um, you know, what what is what is the department like and what are they highlighting on uh social media did a ride along to see how those compared. So um we're we're definitely gonna take advantage of that and keep that going for anybody that's looking to um any looking to work here, even this podcast. Um, you know, it's if they if somebody's interested in this department, they could be listening right now. And um if that's

Recruitment Through Social Media

SPEAKER_00 7:35

the case, you know, we want you we want good officers to come down and work for us, you know.

SPEAKER_03 7:39

It is surprising how many people I have met at like swearing-ins or um you know, academy graduations who've said, like, oh my gosh, I listened to the podcast and you know, learned more about the department, and it was super cool this episode, and I liked your conversation about this. Uh, so it is just another tool that public affairs uses, not just obviously for recruitment, but to get the word out about certain things. You know, the chief has a weekly podcast, and that's kind of where we talk about things that are more topical. And then we do the monthly podcast like this episode, where we sit down with someone, we get to know them a little better, we get to know their bureau or their unit a little bit better and be able to explain that to the public. And it's, you know, with social media, you get like, I think now the most you can do for a video is three minutes. Um, but this is long form. You can take as long as you need, you can be casual, you don't have to like jam your best video and sound bites into three minutes. You can take your time and it's just a good tool to have for public affairs for those reasons as well.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Yeah, and I like that we can we can highlight um, you know, a a department or a part of the department that, you know, say somebody's from Omaha, Nebraska, they don't have a marine unit.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:50

So they don't even know how that type of thing might even work with a police a police department. Um, we have multiple officers in our marine unit, and that's something they do every day with how much waterways we have. So um just over 400 miles of canals. Yeah, the most in the world. So um just getting another perspective on that as well.

SPEAKER_03 9:09

Definitely. I'm interested too, because you know, I started the job and Mercedes was already in the job, and so we've been working together for the last two and a half years. And um, obviously, I don't want you to go. Are you gonna miss me? Obviously. Okay, I just wanted it on the record. But thankfully, for those of you who don't know the layout of our building, she's like right down the hall from me. Yeah, I'll still see her probably every day. Um, but you know, it's interesting and I'm excited for the perspective that you bring to the table and and the different things that I'll be able to learn and see from you. Uh, we talked about too, like when we were onboarding him about like if you if you see a process or if you have an idea that's better than ours, like don't be afraid to share it. What we're doing isn't the only way to get things done. Um, so I'm excited for just what that will bring to the table and bring to the social media. And, you know, she knows a a group of people more specifically because of the time that she was on patrol and you just came off patrol, so you know others more, and so we'll maybe we'll get new voices and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Yeah,

Why Long-Form Podcasts Matter

SPEAKER_00 10:13

definitely.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

What do you want to change? Now that you've like sat with us and you've learned things, what would you like to switch up a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 10:20

Um like I said, I just I want to I want to use it as an opportunity to just highlight officers. You know, I have ideas of um, you know, I I want to ride with with some of the guys on the road, I want to ride with people in a specialty unit and um just uh really show um uh like give a good representation of of what it's like out there on the road because I didn't know before I started this job. I mean, I knew a little bit, I watched some shows and movies, but you can't get a full sense of it. And I I'm gonna try my best to translate that to um, you know, make these little mini documentaries or something about somebody with our DUI unit or somebody um in our motor unit.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

So I like that you just said mini documentary. That's so awesome. Is that now is that like within three minutes or is that uh Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Oh it's it's very it's yeah, bite-size tiny documentary.

SPEAKER_03 11:16

Yeah. Um well if it ever needs to be a little longer, we'll put it on YouTube.

SPEAKER_00 11:20

For sure.

SPEAKER_03 11:21

You know, sometimes we even like we'll have things and we're like, we can't get it down to three minutes.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Oh my gosh. Well, hey, that's the the luckily the probably the good thing about people watching this podcast is that they have a little bit longer or listening to, sorry. Yes. Um, have a little bit longer of an attention span. But for everybody else, myself included, even three minutes is a long time for me to sit there and pay attention. But I think that a lot of the stuff that we do is interesting enough. Like how often do you get to see an inside look into what a police officer does on a day-to-day basis? For those who are nerdy enough, I actually did a ride along with Klackowitz uh probably four months ago, probably. I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

It was a year ago. It was not. It was in August of last year. Something like that. Yeah. I know. It's fine.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

I didn't realize it was that long. I don't know. Although I guess that makes sense because I don't think I don't think I was pregnant yet, and now I'm like four, like can't see it. Maybe you can't, I don't know. I'm like four months pregnant-ish. Yeah. And uh time flies. I don't even know. Time does fly. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 12:30

So a year ago is like a little premalation.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

But that'll be me now.

SPEAKER_03 12:35

Yeah, you'll be the one riding along and getting all the good content. And did you ever think when you became a police officer that you'd be like taking videos and photos as your job and doing a podcast and awards and all that?

SPEAKER_00 12:50

Yeah, I mean, the podcast wasn't even a thing when I started. Um I wanted to be on the radio when I was a kid, and I mean, we can kind of call this radio. So I'm getting to live out that dream for now. But I didn't think I would be doing it um as a police officer. So um it's exciting. I'm looking forward to it. Um I want to make it fun. I it's I have to find the fun and everything. I can't, I don't take very much seriously, especially myself. So um I need to just find a way to make it fun. And um that's so far this has been fun.

SPEAKER_03 13:24

This job is fun. I would

Mini Docs And Officer Spotlights

SPEAKER_03 13:26

say that 90% of the time it's fun. Yeah, 10%, you know, you have to cover some serious stuff and things happen, but most of it's fun. And you know, you've already tackled a lot. You've got five years on patrol, you are a field training officer, you're in the honor guard, you serve on some other committees, I guess for lack of a better word, within the department to help improve technology and things of that nature. So this is just like the next step in continuing to tackle more things within the department.

SPEAKER_00 13:54

Yeah, I just always wanted to be a good resource. Like I just want to be I want to be useful. And um, yeah, yeah, I was I I helped with um our software program that we use that we switched over to. I'm one of the subject matter experts. So um if my phone's cookie, if my phone's ringing and somebody needs help with it, I I might look annoyed, but there's a part of me that's like, you need me. And uh I like that.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

So yeah, yeah. You're very useful, but you're also a hub of useless facts. I think we've discovered it's really and it they're they're kind of maybe useless, but they're still kind of interesting. So we said we were gonna put you on the spot and ask you um for one of your useless facts that you like to share.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Well, um, I thought of a couple word-related ones.

Finding Fun In The Job

SPEAKER_00 14:41

So I don't know if you guys know these. Okay, let's hear it. Um the longest one-syllable word. Um so from what I understand, and I haven't looked it up to verify this lately, but when I heard this, this was the longest one-syllable word. It's squirreled.

SPEAKER_04 14:57

Squirreled.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Squirreled. And it's long as it as in like the number of letters.

SPEAKER_04 15:03

Squirrel?

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Squirreled.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

Squirreled. It is one syllable, I guess. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:07

Squirreled. Or yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:09

Interesting. Wouldn't squirrel be squirrel? Or is it just squirrel? I think it's just one syllable.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

I feel like it depends on how you say squirrel in the English language. I feel like I feel like when I'm having like an ADHD moment, it's like squirrel. Yes. But usually I think I would say squirrel. Squirrel. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:32

I don't know. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

There was a uh um a country singer, this woman, but she made it into three syllables. It was like squirrel.

SPEAKER_04 15:40

Skawirrel. Yeah. But who is the country singer?

SPEAKER_00 15:44

I think it was Lainey Wilson.

SPEAKER_04 15:45

Skawirl.

SPEAKER_00 15:46

Yeah. The way she says it, just with her accent, it becomes three syllables. But she's got a heart like a truck. From what I understand, that's the longest one-syllable word. Completely useless, right? I hope I didn't let you down with that.

SPEAKER_03 16:00

No, it's very interesting. You told me something I didn't already know. Huh. So interesting.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Um, I'll try to More to come. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:07

We should have this as a segment that we end the podcast with every time.

SPEAKER_00 16:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 16:11

Um what is it gonna be called? Clackowitz useless facts with Steve. Useless facts with Steve. Your useless fact of the day with Steve.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Useless facts with clack.

SPEAKER_03 16:21

How about that? A useless, useless fact with clack or facts?

SPEAKER_00 16:26

I could just do one. Useless fact with clack with that. I'm gonna run out eventually, so let's not.

SPEAKER_03 16:31

Or clack's facts.

SPEAKER_00 16:33

It's whatever. It runs let me trademark that.

SPEAKER_03 16:37

Clax facts. All right. That's gonna be our new segment. Every podcast episode you will end with a useless fact. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

I want you to put that in Chief's chat because um I think Chief pretends to laugh at my jokes sometimes and they're really bad. So I want to see his reaction to his clax facts. Claxfax.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Okay, and we'll see if I have this job after that one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:01

They're shipping me on the phone. I'll stop recording and I'll be like, yeah, stop doing that. I don't want to do that again. That's

Clack’s Facts And Farewell

SPEAKER_03 17:08

hilarious. Um, all right, friends, did we miss anything?

SPEAKER_00 17:11

I don't think so. Anything else you want to say? No, I just I um happy to be here. I'm excited. We're gonna miss Mercedes, but um, I'm looking forward to this and and uh yeah, it's gonna be great.

SPEAKER_03 17:23

It'll be awesome. So uh next one, you're gonna be sitting here. Yeah, yeah. It's gonna be great.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

I I also just want to say that I have loved working with you and doing all the different public affairs things with you that goes beyond what we could even begin to describe in a podcast. And um, I'm not moving on, just so everyone knows, I'm not moving on because I was unhappy. I was very happy. I love my job. But I think that's the fun about being an officer is that you can go and you can do 80 million different things in the department. That's the fun of having a large that's a that's a bit much, that's an over-exaggeration. But there are a lot of things that you can do in a big department. And I think getting to go and and not master different things, but you know, learn skills and grow and then grow in something else is pretty fun.

SPEAKER_03 18:12

So that's what I plan to do. I think it's good to make it clear. You're doing what you're supposed to be doing, which is you know, staying somewhere for a few years, going on to the next thing, going on to the next thing, getting as much experience as you can in different things, and hopefully promoting one day or whatever you desire to do.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Yeah, I I put in for this job. I know there's rumors that they're shipping me off because my dad jokes were so bad, but I actually put in for this spot and really wanted it.

SPEAKER_03 18:35

So yes, I'm super proud of you. I'll miss you. Thank you. You're the only person I know to work this job with, but I'm excited obviously to have you as well. Um we'll still go get coffee. But yeah, I haven't lost my coffee buddy. She's uh gonna be right down the hall. So I'll see you every single day. Do you want to come? You can come too.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

You're invited.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 18:52

You're invited, even though you don't like the fru fru coffees like we do.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

I just straight up coffee. If they have that, I'm in.

SPEAKER_03 18:58

All right, perfect. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us, and we will uh see you next time. Yep. Stay safe.