CORRECT FACEBOOK PAGE… The correct Delta Police Department page, shown here, can be found by searching Delta Police or @deltapolicestation on Facebook.
By: Jacob Kessler
The Delta Police Department is holding out hope that their new Facebook page will remain up after having issues with three previous other pages.
Police Chief Nathan Hartsock explained that the first page had been up for years before being hacked.
Whoever hacked the page also managed to remove the administrators from the account which locked out the department from being able to make any changes.
The ability to make comments and posts remained for those who were signed in but everything else was locked.
Numerous attempts to get ahold of someone at Facebook lead nowhere with attempts continuing for around a year.
“Eventually I had to make the decision to give up on the page and move on to create another one,” said Chief Hartsock.
The hacked page was even reported as not being a correct account and that it was giving out inappropriate content which also did not produce any results.
The department moved on and created a second Facebook page which was successful for a while. Six to eight months after its creation, the page was unpublished due to “inappropriate content.”
No other explanation was given to the department, no method was provided to override this decision and no communication took place with the department despite numerous attempts to contact Facebook to fix the issue.
“We waited thirty days thinking maybe it was put in Facebook jail or something and nothing happened. We waited another six months and still nothing happened,” explained Chief Hartsock.
A third attempt to create a new page was made by the Police Departments Clerk Chelsea Taft. That page was only up for around five minutes before also being unpublished. An appeal was sent to
Facebook with the only message received by the department stating that, due to Covid the phones were not being manned.
For a while the department had to resort to putting their information on the village’s Facebook page. “There is no real appeal process. No one to call or to contact for us to fix this issue.
Hopefully we are now able to engage with the community like we need to. Hopefully it will go better this time,” continued Chief Hartsock.
In order to get the new page up, certain changes were made to the page which left out information for the department like the address and phone number.
So far, the new page has been up for a week. If you are a member of the Delta Police Department’s page this may not be the correct page.
Currently as of Friday, March 25th the correct Police page on Facebook has 32 people who have liked the page vs over 2,000 for the previous page that is still up. The last post made on the hacked page discusses a drug take back day and was posted on April 20th, 2021.
The correct Police page can be found by searching Delta Police or @deltapolicestation on Facebook.
Facebook was contacted and asked for a response to the issue, but the company has since not provided one.
Jacob can be reached at jacob@thevillagereporter.com