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ALBANY, N.Y. -- New Yorkers are being encouraged to "like" and "follow" the New York State Police on Facebook and Twitter.

State Police say they will use the social media sites to post important public safety alerts and information on how the public can help investigations.

The superintendent says this will help move the State Police into the 21st century.

Superintendent Joseph D'Amico said, "For us as an agency, a lot of times we have information we want to put out there, whether it's crime tips or traffic alerts or anything else. And before you had to go visit our website, you had to search for it. Now we're able to take that information and push it out very quickly through a tweet and give you that link to go right in there on Facebook and be able to get it."

Even though the State Police have joined social media, they are still stressing that the public should call 911 in the case of an emergency.