Tag: Police

Community building through social media – how police building relationships online can get you support when it really matters

Screenshot: PC Stanley's Twitter page

Recently I was having a conversation with Nick about the value of social media, the community links you can build using Twitter and blogs and the value this has in the real world, when I remembered the story of PC Richard Stanley’s blog.

PC Stanley is a blogging police officer and Twitter user from Walsall. He uses these platforms to talk to the “locals” about his job and help give plain English examples of how the police work and why things are done in a certain way sometimes. I read his blog, follow him on Twitter and have personally never found him to be anything less than factual and informative with some nice humorous banter, creme eggs, #foxwatch and competitions thrown into the mix.

A couple of months ago he wrote a piece in response to a news article in the national press where a suspected burglar was shot during an incident and the property owner who had shot him was arrested.

It was a factual piece that explained, from a policing point of view, why sometimes the “victim” of the burglary can also end up being arrested along with the burglar in cases like this. It was written so that it would be easy for the public to digest – and I felt it was. It was informative without being patronising and a good insight into how a decision to arrest someone could be made.

However, what wasn’t easy for regular readers to digest was what happened next. His blog’s comment section exploded with anonymous commentators condescending and, in some cases, outright insulting PC Stanley. It wasn’t an argument about the accuracy of any details in the blog but an inference he was doing something wrong by engaging in this way and “toeing the party line.”

Read more

BBC Coventry and warwickshire, public sector, hyperlocal and social media – an evening.

Monday evening was a thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours with a broad range of folk from the public sector, BBC and blogging communities in Coventry and Warwickshire.

We brought them together as part of the work we have been doing with the BBC to encourage stronger links and better understanding between mainstream news and hyperlocal blogging.  The BBC team n Coventry was keen to reach out to a broad range of people in their patch with an interest in social media.

a group of people sitting at a table talking

It was run as a very simple unconference – Read more

Stuff I've seen February 13th through to February 14th

These are my links for February 13th through February 14th:

  • Local council elections in 2010 « LGiU – the local democracy blog – At the BBC I loved organising and doing election coverage. (Genuinely did) This post shows that while the Local Government Information unit was thinking there are 166 local councils holding elections on May 6th the researchers I used to rely on, Rallings and Thrasher reckon there are 176. This can't be a tricky single data source problem to crack!
  • Google Code Blog: Announcing Google Chart Tools
  • BBC – The Virtual Revolution Blog: BBC Digital Revolution rushes for you to download and edit – Argued for this in 1999 – great to see it happening. The most embarrassing bits of the rushes (un-edited video) are the ones when the producer reporter is making people do/say what they need them to do. That may well be the stuff left out! "Releasing rushes like this is an experiment, and there are some limitations. We're not releasing all our rushes, for two reasons. Firstly, we have a compliance procedure at the BBC which means that all online video has to be viewed by a senior manager – there's simply too much footage to do this properly. We do estimate that we will be releasing around 5 hours of interview material, featuring 20-30 interviewees, and up to an hour of other content."
  • Blogging and Facebook for councillors – Councillor Mary Reid offers you the benefit of her experience. She offers top tips on how councillors can make the most of blogs and social network media. (thanks to @pigsonthewing )
  • PC Ed Rogerson (hotelalpha9) on Twitter – This is one of my favourite bits of the web for the crossover between social media, very local stuff and public service: "Just had a meeting with my Sergeant. I've been instructed to conduct more speed checks in Starbeck and to seize tobacco off children."

Stuff I've seen December 4th through to December 6th

These are my links for December 4th through December 6th:

  • Measuring digital engagement – Digigov – "Recently, I’ve been working with colleagues in COI on this problem and we’ve come up with three common measures that appear to work across all digital engagement or social media tools:

    1. Number of relationships
    2. Number of user-generated content items
    3. Number of referrals/recommendations"

  • Listening to you – "Residents in Longton and Meir are invited to meet their local police commander next week, and a new billboard will leave them in no doubt of where and when to find him. A 20ft by 10ft billboard has been sited on Weston Road in Meir (near The Broadway) inviting people to come and speak to the local commander. " via @Mike_rawlins
  • Charlie Beckett, POLIS Director » Blog Archive » Networked Journalism: Challenges To NGOs and Mainstream Media – What a relief: "In a recent Polis private seminar with a major international NGO and a global news organisation, the head of the news media’s international division said that he now accepted that they had to work together to report the world:

    “We may have, if we are lucky, one stringer in a particular country. You may well have a dozen people there who know it well. It makes sense for us to use your resources to cover a story or issue.”

    All media organisations are now opening themselves up to gathering material from the public – including NGOs. And NGOs are now expecting their humanitarian staff to act more like journalists. "

  • Freedom to Lead | John’s Idea – "In Leicestershire 92 council staff spend their time keeping government up to date on 3,000 performance indicators at a cost of £7 million a year. The need to reduce these costs, and shift the emphasis of performance reporting from central government to local people, sit at the heart of the LGA campaign Freedom to Lead."
  • CivicSurf » “That’s not a blog. Blogs are boring with lots of text” – Hear, hear: "

    What struck me last night, and not for the first time, was that people still have this ingrained view of what a blog is. When I showed the cake site to one lady she blurted out, “That’s not a blog! A blog is boring with lots of text.” WordPress.com still promotes itself to bloggers and offers:

    “Express yourself. Start a blog.”

    It’s a website that is easy to update and optimised for search engines. End of. Let’s not label it with something that puts people off.