Last week I went to the LSE to hear a talk from Bill Bratton the ex-US police chief, ‘super-cop’ and current chairman of global risk consultancy firm Kroll. Following an interesting lecture touching on both his own experience of policing across America and the current evolution of the British force he responded to a question on social media. He stated his belief that during a crisis it’s important to have as many communication channels available as possible an opinion clearly influenced by the communication meltdown he experienced in New York during the September 11th terrorist attacks. Earlier in the day he had given a similar answer to a parliamentary committee when they quizzed him on the same topic warning that by removing a communication channel “You have the potential to throw the whole community into even more critical shock.”
A few Months ago I wrote a blog post on social media and the News International hacking scandal in which I was relatively dismissive of the term “London Summer” coined to associate the fall of NOTW with the revolutionary uprisings across the middle east. Just a few weeks later we experienced violent clashes of our own here in London. Despite the manifold differences between the causes and development of the uprisings one constant was the fact that social media both played a role during and came up for scrutiny immediately after both the Arab spring and the London Riots. During the riots I was able to use social media (via a few simple TweetDeck filters) to find how close the violence was and look for any reports of it spreading nearer to me in Kentish Town, which fortunately it didn’t. Listening to Bratton it struck me as positive that such a senior figure was remaining rational on a topic which at the time received some predictably hysterical coverage in the media. Despite this, it seemed that there was still a lack of appreciation, at least in Bratton’s thinking, of how quite how relevant social media can be to the philosophies he champions.
One of the longstanding cornerstones of Bratton’s policing beliefs was “ensuring timely accurate intelligence and relentless follow up” This set me thinking about both my own use of Twitter during the riots and also the broader role social can play in extending the relationship between a service provider and their audience, especially after the provision of the service. In fact the advice RMM would give most clients regarding customer service would likely be the recommendation that comprehensive follow up is both valued by customers and something which is highly suited to social media. Additionally, Bratton’s talk was heavily concerned with one of RMM’s favourite social verbs: “collaboration”. Yet there was no suggestion of social media being used as anything other than a tool for the police to investigate or separately as a tool for members of the public to communicate with each other. Genuine collaboration between the police and the public and the kind of comprehensive follow up Bratton built his policing philosophy on don’t seem to be on the social media agenda at the highest table which is a great shame.
The irony, of course, is that in certain areas the MET is already pushing ahead with innovative and praise worthy social initiatives. Back in 2009 they launched a Powerful anti-knife campaign focusing on a journey powered by user choice and multiple endings to warn young people about the dangers of carrying a knife. More recently in the aftermath of the riots we’ve seen the MET use Flickr to get the public’s help with identifying looters. All good stuff but as is the case with many large organisations I suspect that it is individual teams using social without a top down policy of integrating social media into the force’s as a whole.
It is clear that the police and indeed Kroll are already using social media for timely and accurate intelligence before and during crises and for evidence gathering during the aftermath. However, I wonder how long it will be before the potential for social media and its power is fully realised at all levels of organisations such as Kroll and the Metropolitan police service. The philosophy is there but it seems they penny has yet to fully drop.
