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My question however, is slightly different. If you were to stand as a PCC (and at the time of writing only one person has gone on record stating that he wishes to do so) what would your manifesto be?

Ask that question of the general public and the answers might be obvious – more police officers on the beat, reduced bureaucracy, reduced costs, less crime… the list is probably predictable. However I hope that most intelligent PCC candidates will consider what is achievable before making wild promises to the electorate. After all if they don’t, they are unlikely to be re-elected for a second term.

All PCCs will of course need to address the issues above – particularly the one around budgets and costs. As they will take up office in the late autumn, they will be immersed in budget setting for the following year almost immediately, and decisions on council tax precepts will need to be taken within a couple of months. Any decision to increase council tax will therefore probably be a key electoral issue.

In some areas of the country there may be local ‘push button’ issues; those local concerns that will have to be addressed by PCCs. However the wide geographical area that many PCCs will cover (think of Devon andCornwall, orThamesValleyfor example) mean that these high profile issues may not be high profile across the entire electorate.

Some PCCs will have an understanding of policing, community safety or similar, and will have a particular set of views that they will bring with them from previous employment or experience. Again these views – often not informed by understanding some of the constraints and unique operating environment of the police – could sound good on a manifesto, could easily gain public support…but fail the test of achievability.

So over to you – if you were standing, what are your top 3 (or 5 or whatever) priorities for policing. How would you phrase those to get you elected, but to also be able to deliver those promises once you were elected?

The critical point is that social media can be used for public order, critical incidents,  neighbourhood policing…indeed all areas of policing.

Forces must engage early to build the relationships that can be used in emergency situations. Build trust early so people believe what you say. Build a community online that can assist in rumour killing, requests for help and clear up and investigation.

So if the unexpected happened to your organisation – how prepared are you? What is your support network on social media? A few suggestions to help:

Have ICT that works with social media sites – sounds obvious, but in the recent riots several forces had to rely on personal laptops and 3g dongles to access the internet, as force networks were too restrictive.

Have communications and operational people next to each other and talking about what they are seeing and saying, and what they see the public saying via social media.

Use the contacts you have built up in peacetime to get your messages out – youth clubs, businesses, local celebrities – all these can help in times of crisis.

Use the hashtag that is being used by the public, or if there isn’t one, create one. (Beware of hashtags that are rude or offensive however).

Plan for the transition from a steady state to an emergency situation where communications may need to be more controlled than usual. Also plan for an orderly transition back to a steady state once the emergency is over.

Organisations that are leaders in their field have many of the following characteristics – both for online activites and offline:

• Prepare in peace time rather than at war
• Have leadership buy in
• Establish engagement at a local level, not at a corporate communications level alone
• Consider the impact of both digital and traditional communications

This isn’t my image – just one that I feel reflects the public view of technology, and of the police.

Many people – especially in middle management in the police-  are frightened of this brave new world of engagement. There is comfort in the processes we all understand, and have a degree of control over. Increasingly however our world does not work like that.

People are talking about policing, having conversations and discussing your services, without inviting you. Journalists are finding stories and presenting them in the traditional media this way, and more importantly many people are finding their news via Twitter, sharing it via Facebook, uploading their videos and pictures of your services.

“Effective engagement is at the heart of policing. the revolution in digital technology means that people are engaging with services at their own convenience and in the manner, medium and at a time which suits them.” Nick Keane – in the Engage Guide to police forces using social media.

“the revolution in digital technology means that people are engaging with services at their own convenience and in the manner, medium and at a time which suits them.”

The speed of technology for the public vastly exceeds the speed with which traditional police force communications can respond. Modern smart phones can take a high definition video, edit it and upload it to the internet…before your officers have even returned to the station at the end of their shift. Have a look at this video of a TfL employee abusing a passenger for an example of what that can look like – this employee lost his job before the day was out.

There are loads of videos on  YouTube videos on policing – some good, some mis-understood, some bad. Some are even posted by forces themselves. The following is just a quick edit of a few videos out there:

By posting videos, commenting on other people’s videos, or refusing to comment, what message are we sending? How can we use the huge numbers of people watching videos online to engage more widely, and explain the context of issues such as taser deployment etc?

The consultation process should aim to maximise the opportunities of local residents and others (e.g. businesses, school children etc.) to make their concerns heard and be taken into account before the organisation makes a final decision. Skilful communication is an essential element of consultation.

Two Questions:

Do we just consult on issues that are easy or controversial to the public for us – budget setting, local priorities, station closures – or is it time to look at widening the impact that the public and key partners have on policing?

Which traditional methods still have their place?

The NPIA local policing and confidence guide talks about Access, Influence, Interventions and Answers as the way to build a successful engagement with local communities:

Access – If people can’t access their local police easily, they won’t be engaged, by definition. There needs to be a local understanding of the structure and working relationships within neighbourhood teams. Need for continuity of staff and training for both police staff and for local volunteers.

Influence – Police forces need to understand the impact of issues traditionally seen as ‘low level’ on feelings of public safety. Involving local people in setting priorities will not only improve people’s experience of contact with the police, but also give them influence over what matters locally. Done well it all leads to improved confidence.

Interventions – As the last entry in this series said – stop making all the decisions. Local communities need to arrive at solutions through true joint problem solving. Solving long standing problems will improve confidence in policing. Solving them together is easier and cheaper, builds community skills and sustainable change, and also improves confidence. Finally, once the foundations are laid, there is a need for joint tasking of police and local volunteers and organisations to improve the effectiveness of any actions.

Answers – Feeding back information about action and outcomes to community members is vital so people know what happened. There is a need for marketing and a variety of communication methods, as not everyone will be online (or read the local paper for that matter).

New ways of working using social media are a great way of widening all four areas. Have a look at this video of a Twitter based app by Runnymede beat for one way of giving access and feedback to the public. Virtual ward panels as covered in a previous blog also allow real influence, not just lip service.

Old style drafty village hall consultation still has it’s place…but social media (Twitter, video, online questionnaires and meetings, Facebook etc.) has started to make this seem as outdated as the fax or teletype.

Stop making decisions. Or at least stop taking all the decisions yourself.

Stop thinking that the police have the monopoly on all the good ideas. As one commentator on part 1 of this series said:

“[police] systems reflect a style of policing from at least 30 years ago in the days when it was considered the job of the police and not the public to solve crimes. In fact, it was seen as an admission of failure if the police turned to the public for assistance.”

We need to move on (or perhaps it is move back to when the police were the public and the public were the police), and accept that no-one knows the local community as well as the local community.

Activities such as virtual ward panels can spread the involvement to the wider community. This approach has been tried in Kensington and Chelsea in London, and has delivered some good results – real community intelligence leading to detailed community focussed priorities. In simple terms these are regular online surveys completed by a panel of people (which can be several hundred strong) in their own time, and providing real opportunities for them to influence the areas of questioning, and thus police activity.

A few things to remember:

• The questions must be local, specific and timely
• The process of creating them can be useful in itself
• The panel should be made up of a variety of interests…or you can have several panels (for youth, businesses etc).

The effect on the public of just reading the questions is often to increase confidence in neighbourhood policing – the police are obviously aware of the details of what is going on, and are keen to ask the public’s opinion on local matters.

There are many ways of widening involvement – we just need to actively encourage them, make them real, make them meaningful. Other methods include Twitter/Facebook accounts, live online beat meetings, street surgeries, and yes, even traditional village hall neighbourhood meetings.

So think: How clear is your force on the decision making process, and where decisions can be influenced and by whom?

The ultimate aim should be to only take decisions where professional knowledge is essential, and even then in conjunction with the public where necessary. We should flood our decision making processes with the public…and not just the usual suspects.

Part 2 focuses on some of the potential downsides of social media in major crime investigations.

People will be well aware by now of the use that social media can be put to by criminals – the use of SM for organising criminal activities such as riots received widespread coverage in the press recently. There are however other aspects of social media in policing that are not as well discussed.

• Covert operations – much of policing relies on covert operations of one sort or another. For the conspiracy theorists out there, this is well regulated (mainly by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, or RIPA). Despite the promises of Hollywood, much of this covert work requires old fashioned surveillance – people following other people, on foot or in vehicles. The rise of mobile technology means that a number plate can be traced by anyone in an instant (via DVLA’s website), and facial recognition has come a long way, meaning that it won’t be long before criminals can check a photograph of an associate against the memory of the Internet. If you posted 10 years ago on your Facebook page that you were looking to join the cops, then the resultant matching of your face to that post could be a serious matter. If you just have an unusual surname, then a simple Google search will reveal much about who you really are.

• Crowd Sourcing of anti-police information – I have posted before about the use of social media to counter police ‘kettling’ tactics in public order situations, but the uses for the technology can  go far wider than that. The Website Who’s a rat describes itself as the “largest online database of informants and agents”. It’s mission is described as “definitely not an attempt to intimidate or harass informants or agents or to obstruct justice. This websites purpose is for defendants with few resources to investigate, gather and share information about a witness or law enforcement officer.” Even given that aim, the uses to which this could be put need to be understood by police forces engaged in covert work.

• Covert tactics – forgive me for not going into detail here, but there are plenty of sources on the Internet where covert police tactics are discussed and revealed. Often the source for these leaks are police forces themselves, who are after all staffed by humans who sometimes reveal information that perhaps they shouldn’t. In the pre-Internet era, this would usually have limited consequences, but the power of the information age means that any slip can be shared and kept alive for years, and a number of small pieces of information can be amalgamated, jigsaw like, into a complete picture of tactics.

• Criminal tip offs – criminals can use the instant, always on social media tools to warn one another. One recent example from aUKforce springs to mind where an admission of criminality was placed by an individual on their Facebook profile, only for their friends to note that this was evidence and should be removed. In that case the police were already aware, but all too often as criminals get more savvy it will be only the stupid ones that get caught.

None of this means that you shouldn’t use social media. In fact you need to understand it – positives and negatives alike – and only once you have an understanding can you take a conscious decision on how and where to use it, and when it may not be appropriate.

There has been lots written about the use of social media in the recent UK riots, and perhaps I will return to that subject in the future. In these posts however, I want to focus on how police forces can use social media in serious and major crime investigations, and talk about some of the potential downsides that this new technology offers.

Part 1 focuses on some of the uses of social media in major crime investigations.

Be aware

In any major incident happening anywhere near people with a mobile phone signal, you can bet that there will be coverage on the social media networks. In the case of the Hudson plane crash in the USA, the deaths of Osama Bin Laden and Michael Jackson, and numerous other events, Twitter was the first place the news broke. For police forces this is both a benefit and a challenge.

#BostonExplosion

Around 7:28pm on Wednesday 13th July 2011 the emergency services were called to the Broadfield Lane Industrial Estate in the small Lincolnshire town of Boston after reports of an explosion in an industrial unit on the estate.

When police got there they found that five men had been killed and a further man had been seriously injured.

The initial response on Twitter was rapid – at or about the same time that the 999 call came through to police headquarters, the first tweet on the subject went out, talking about multiple fatalities.

In the absence of an official message, people rushed to fill the vacuum on the social media sites.

As you can see there was a significant degree of questioning and understandable concern from people nearby, and those with friends and relatives nearby. There were those who thought it might be an Islamic fundamentalist bomb factory, others an exercise, whilst others guessed at gas explosions. Luckily this event happened before the riots, otherwise it could have been a trigger for something far worse, and the explosion occurred at a time and place making it unlikely to have been a terrorist attack.

Ultimately, by the time this was the main item on the 10 o’clock news, #BostonExplosion was trending on Twitter (trending simply means that Twitter automatically sees this as a subject with lots of people interested in it. Twitter describes it as a way to help people discover the “most breaking” news stories from across the world).

Once the police released an audio update on the situation, this was picked up by Twitter, and the official line began to get out. There was however nearly 3 hours when the social media world was making up rumours and trying to guess what had happened.

Lesson - police forces need to think about what will be happening on social media, and they need to consider it quickly. An agreed and measured press release in 3 hours no longer works as the sole method of communication. When I speak to SIOs (Senior Investigating Officers for such incidents) they are often concerned, rightly, with managing information flows. Reveal too much and a force runs the risk of looking foolish at best, or revealing critical investigative avenues to the criminals at worst. However a simple reassurance message can be released “we are aware of the incident and are attending. “Further updates will be posted using this hashtag” “Please do not come to the scene” etc. Rumours that are obviously untrue can be quickly dealt with “we have no indication that this was a terrorist incident” for example. Quick communication does not mean losing control. No communication on the other hand does risk losing control.

Community issues, confidence and reassurance

After the incident there were discussions that continued on Twitter, Facebook and on the comments threads on various websites. Again a police force needs to be aware of what is being said for investigative and intelligence reasons, but also to reassure the public.

Comments posted within a day or so included “…this is what happens when you get involved in illegal ops is no great loss as they are defrauding every tax paying BRITISH citizen what else are they involved in?… get rid of them they are only sponging on us and our country send all their families back to where they come from ASAP” (from a website comments thread) and the following on Facebook from the right-wing English Defence League.

As well as indicators of community tensions towards the eastern European community in Boston there were comments about the police. “…police were aware of this illegal alcohol manufacture – if we are to believe what the locals are saying. Lives have been lost and there will be the cost of investigating this, and no doubt compensation payments/court cases, all because of the police’s inability to investigate crime”   and “All the locals seem to know they were illegally distilling vodka so why didn’t the police know??”.

Lesson - as well as the opportunity to investigate crime, forces need to consider community tensions as expressed online, and to use the opportunities presented by comments such as all the local knew this was going on to seek intelligence about the incident and possibly prevent other tragedies occurring. I use the word tragedy deliberately, as the following comment, posted on a YouTube video of the incident seems a good way to drive my point home.