Public safety, with a side of snark: Kitty Hawk Police Department uses humor to create community connection
- Corinne Saunders
- 17 hours ago
- 7 min read
The Kitty Hawk Police Department building is seen on Wednesday, July 8, 2026. (Photo by Anthony Leone)
By Corinne Saunders
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KITTY HAWK — “If you’re reading this while driving, don’t…”
So reads a Friday, July 3, Facebook post by the Kitty Hawk Police Department.
While calling attention to the North Carolina law against using a mobile phone to text, email or read messages while driving, this and other social media posts’ humorous presentations serve several purposes, according to the author.
“One of our main goals for the agency is engagement—to be approachable for people if they need anything at all,” said Detective Jason Rigler. “That they know that we’re human beings too, and they can come to us with anything they might need to report or trust an investigator to look at.”
Rigler’s many hats at the Kitty Hawk Police Department include serving as public information officer (PIO), a role that involves running the department’s social media pages.
“So first, we tested the water and noticed that we were getting a little bit more interaction and communication with the community by adding a little dose of humor—and then it just went from there and spread,” he said.
Last year, he said the department’s posts received 13 million interactions, while the town has 3,800 full-time residents.
Rigler said he started in the role in 2022, after the retirement of Sgt. Brian Strickland, a detective sergeant for the criminal investigations division who was also the former PIO.
“I really tried to emulate Brian and what he was doing,” Rigler said, noting that Strickland’s humorous posts sometimes included “The Far Side” comics by Gary Larson.
“We just weren’t so big where people were noticing,” Rigler said. “And now that we are, I think it’s kind of taken on the legs of its own.”
Some people who vacation in the area once a year follow the page and comment regularly, he noted.
“I just wanted to try to make people think more,” he said. “Instead of being like, ‘Oh, you should wear your seat belt’ every post [or], ‘Hey, don’t shoot fireworks. Fireworks are illegal in North Carolina.’”
He’s seen the posts drive higher engagement, and this means more people are getting the message.
“We find that instead of scrolling past, people are liking, commenting and they’re coming back to comment on other people’s stuff too, so…they’re coming back three or four times to look at the posts,” he said. “We’re not just trying to be sarcastic for sarcasm’s sake.”
In his research, he said it’s hard to find another agency with followers numbering 10 times the resident population. “We’ve got about 3,800 full-time residents and we’re at 43,000 followers on Facebook alone.”
“When I took over in 2022, I believe we had like 18K [followers],” he said. “We hit 20[K] maybe a year ago, and then it’s just exploded.”
With the biggest online presence of any local law enforcement agency, Rigler said the department hopes its reach boosts tourism across the Outer Banks.
“Hopefully that brings in more visitors and helps with tourism…because we want the area to be approachable, and we want people to come here,” he said.
Two other North Carolina police departments also use heavy doses of humor, he noted. He suspects at this point, Greensboro Police Department, located roughly five hours west, and Kitty Hawk Police Department social media share an online audience.
“We kind of play off each other and have fun,” Rigler said.
The Greensboro department has been at it for a long time, and he said he strives to emulate them.
“Apparently it’s a detective over there that does everything [social media] too, and I’ve never met him before,” Rigler said. “We just have this, you know, fun connection.”
The relationship, in other words—contrary to a recent community commenter jokingly asking for a wedding invitation—has not moved from online to IRL (in real life).
The Kitty Hawk Police Department shared a humorous post about the heat from the Greensboro Police Department on July 6, 2024. (Screenshot of KHPD Facebook page)
In an unusual aspect for government, Rigler said he doesn’t have to go through rounds of approval before each post.
“I really don’t have a lot of oversight, and part of that is because the town council for Kitty Hawk has been really great with letting us do our job,” he said.
This freedom contrasts with what he said an officer in a similar community outreach role for another local department told him: His counterpart must obtain multiple levels of approval for posts.
Rigler said he appreciates his ability to be nimble—and he pointed to how that also serves the community.
“If we get a bad wreck, I’m at the wreck directing traffic, so it’s nothing for me to snap a photo and do a traffic alert…where if you have all that bureaucracy…that [post] might not come out ‘til the wreck’s clear,” he said.
He’s also received PIO and social media-specific trainings from the University of North Carolina School of Government, FBI-LEEDA—a nonprofit group not directly associated with the FBI—and Adam Myrick (“Adam the PIO”), a PIO for the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department in South Carolina.
“There’s a lot of good training about, you know, how to say things, what to say,” Rigler said. “Obviously I’m on the edge of that kind of thing, because you won’t really see this [sarcasm] too much from anybody else around here.”
During the heat wave affecting the area through the Fourth of July holiday weekend, Rigler posted: “It’s hotter than a Harbor Freight saw blade cutting off catalytic converters out here...”
That references the state law against removing or possessing that car part if the vehicle is not owned by the person, and also pokes fun at low-cost tools that may not be the most efficient option.
When asked about his favorite online comment, Rigler highlighted one on that post.
“Recently I had a good one from John Towler—he’s a retired captain of investigations from Kill Devil Hills [Police Department], so there might be some favoritism there,” Rigler said. “When I said on the 4th, you know, it’s hotter than a Harbor Freight blade going through the catalytic converter, he said…it’s so hot two hobbits jumped out of the bushes and threw a ring into his car, and that one that made my day.”
A screenshot of a July 4, 2026, Kitty Hawk Police Department Facebook post, and showing Detective Jason Rigler’s favorite comment, made by John Towler, a retired police captain from the neighboring Kill Devil Hills Police Department. (Screenshot of KHPD Facebook page)
Overall, he said the department’s most popular post to date was the original “Popsicle Patrol” post from July 7, 2023. That video received over 7,200 reactions.
Two officers “on foot patrol at Walmart” noticed ice pops were on clearance, “bought a ton” and put them in a cooler with ice, he said. They gave the treats to pedestrians utilizing the crosswalk to and from the beach by the Kitty Hawk Bath House and to drivers stopping at the crosswalk for pedestrians, as state law requires.
“They were, you know, out rewarding the community for doing what they should be doing,” he said. “We’ve called it the Popsicle Patrol, and we’ve done it a couple times this year.”
It has become a summer tradition, he noted, as officers will do it a couple times each summer since they started.
Social media is just one aspect of the department’s efforts to connect with the community.
“We do at least two to three events every month, whether it be the fishing tournament that we do for kids; the skate camp that we do; ‘Coffee with a Cop’…we’re constantly doing stuff to get out and engage with the community,” Rigler said.
He has seen increased engagement, especially with the Spanish-speaking community, he said, noting that two officers and the finance officer speak Spanish.
“We’ve had more Hispanic folks willing to come and talk to us,” Rigler said. “We had a ‘Coffee with a Cop’ last month specifically for our Hispanic community at the new 7-Eleven, so we’ve had them show up to that, too.”
Pushback to the sarcasm has been minimal, and he suggested it’s a nonfactor, given the benefits of the increased engagement.
“Every now and then, we’ll have somebody that that is unhappy with how things are coming across; but you know, I’ll take the 0.001% all day,” he said. “A lot of times, you know, we’ll exhaust law enforcement databases of investigative tools, and [after posting a suspect on social media], the community will tell me who it is within 10 minutes…so it is a very valuable partnership as far as policing is concerned.”
A July 1, 2026, Kitty Hawk Police Department Facebook post alludes to people losing fingers from fireworks. (Screenshot of KHPD Facebook page)
A Facebook post the morning of July 1 that garnered around 2,500 laughing and like reactions said: “It’s July 1st. This is the last week some of you will be able to count to ten.”
Some commenters said they only understood the reference to people losing fingers from setting off fireworks after reading other comments.
Of the estimated 13,004 fireworks-related injuries across the U.S. in 2025, 35% involved the fingers and hands, according to The American Fireworks Standards Laboratory’s June 2026 report.
A comment on the July 1 post to give the social media person a raise has been echoed in many recent comments across multiple posts.
Rigler said that the PIO job, of which social media is a part, comes with additional pay.
“I just wanna make people laugh and get the point across in a way that they’re going to remember,” he said.
It appears to be working.
On July 4, Rigler said the department only fielded two fireworks-related calls—and no one lost any digits.
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