Having participated in a client’s strategic planning process this past summer, I took notice of a tweet from the Victoria (British Columbia, Canada) Police Department in mid-November:

Strategy that involves public opinion

To some degree, VicPD’s strategic plan reminds me of Boca Raton’s VIPER program. Visibility, Intelligence, Partnerships, Education, and Resources are, however, more public relations-focused than VicPD’s five-step plan, which takes into account both internal and external issues: operation effectiveness, recruitment and retention, communication improvement, regionalization, and partnerships with other community groups.

Constable Mike Russell, VicPD’s public affairs media spokesperson and social media officer (as well as a former community resource officer with Edmonton, Alberta Police Department), says the plan had been in the works for nearly a year before its launch.

The result: a strategy that spans 8 years rather than the typical 3 to 5. Developed into a 16-page, image-driven brochure, the plan is “a living document,” its online counterpart a bare-bones microsite. That’s because it seeks to crowdsource direction: for community members to collaborate with the agency, helping to determine how their police will function.

To that end, Russell says, the agency intends to use QR codes and social media to establish an ongoing dialogue with the public. They will also update the microsite’s videos, goals and action steps four times a year.

Brainstorming ideas that lead to action

“Our chief and the planning facilitators took us on a different journey than we’re used to, a peer to peer process where rank doesn’t matter,” Russell says. “It was about the questions rather than the answers, so we were given carte blanche for brainstorming.”

Indeed, Russell says the feedback has been made intentionally informal in the plan’s early stages, in order to encourage relationship-building and to avoid bureaucracy within the public forum. “We divided our community into sectors, with people made responsible for each,” he explains. “Then, we began to encourage the citizens to bring their ideas to the working groups.”

Each working group has a lead manager who oversees four police officers and one civilian. The managing inspectors are ultimately responsible for implementing action items, but act as facilitators for their groups to find the right avenues to go down.

Part of that is police differentiating between service provision, rather than delivery—and asking citizens to think in the same terms, basing their ideas off that distinction, which puts police in much more of a “helping” rather than transactional frame. This allows everyone to talk about problems in terms of solutions.

Finding community-specific solutions

For example, within three days of beginning the planning process, Russell says certain themes had begun to emerge. “Regionalization [Step 4] was the biggest,” he says. “And while we didn’t set out to create silos, we found ideas running up the middle with outliers on either side.”

This is particularly important in a community where demographics are shifting. Baby boomers, who are retiring from the workforce in greater numbers, will shift their public safety priorities accordingly. Meanwhile, young people need a format in which to participate effectively.

That’s why planning involves best practices research, including who should do it and how to adapt, train on, and implement their recommendations for police.

Another important piece: recruitment and retention of people who can mirror the community itself. As Russell says, “The organization’s makeup hit a bubble where 1/3 of the people are all retiring in a short timespan. When that happens, all their experience goes away.”

VicPD seeks to hire and train people with many different communication styles, the better to move public relations forward. And, because the agency wants to ingrain social media throughout its operations, it wants people who can focus on taking part in conversations (rather than being technically savvy), which Russell says “brings empathy” on all sides.

Publicizing VicPD’s new focus

Russell says that in lieu of a traditional ad campaign, news media have been helping to generate awareness around the plan—but that word of mouth and social media have been especially crucial in spreading the plan’s content around.

“We’ve changed the way we’re doing social media from a newsfeed, to tweetups and other ways to create personal connections,” Russell explains. “Some of the best conversations happen off hours, in the evenings and weekends.”

VicPD has not yet seen these conversations translated into an offline space; coffee dates, announced on Facebook and Twitter, have not gotten much response.

Finally, Russell says, although VicPD plans to learn from police in other countries, “We’re not looking to do the same thing as everyone else. For example, we’ve seen both right and wrong examples of how to handle the Occupy movement worldwide. The key is to be open and honest with people, not contrived, which many people find offensive.”

Has your agency ever participated in strategic planning for its future? What did that process look like for you?

After I spoke at the Police Leadership Conference in Vancouver last April, my public relations work took off (coincidentally rather than causally). I moved with my family to a new apartment, got ingrained with some big client projects, and experienced some instability in my personal life that led to a process of filtering what — and who — is important from what isn’t.

Over time, although I wasn’t sure what I could say here that I hadn’t already said, I kept feeling as if there was, indeed, something more. That’s reflected in the projects I’ve been involved with this year, including:

A book chapter on bringing “digital natives” — members of generations who have never known a world without technology — into law enforcement. Coauthored with my colleague and friend Lt. David Hubbard of the Eustis (Fla.) Police Department, the chapter discusses recruitment, retention and management issues. You can find it in the book “Dancing with Digital Natives,” published by CyberAge Books.

Following on that chapter, I wrote a short blog post at the DwDN blog about “social rioting,” and a likewise short piece for FUMSI about police taking responsibility for the vast new powers which technology brings them.

Perhaps more salient is my new column for Officer.com. I’ve spent six previous columns talking about various aspects of social media, including strategy, metrics, whether social media is all that much of a force multiplier, and related issues. That led to editor-in-chief Frank Borelli inviting me on Officer Radio (11-17-11) to talk broadly about social media and law enforcement, and I hope to be back soon to discuss further.

I can’t promise that I’ll return to weekly blogging — things are still in flux in my professional life — but Cops 2.0 is still important to me, and as always I welcome suggestions, questions and comments.

What do you think is most important for police to learn about communicating at the intersection of technology and service?

photo credit: jez.atkinson

Back in the ’80s and ’90s, the promise of computer technology was better efficiency. We’d be able to automate rote tasks such that we’d be able to spend more time, better time, with friends and family.

That hasn’t happened. We automate a lot, but we’ve also found new uses for the technology, ones that require us to spend the same number of hours at work. In many cases we’ve made connections with people that never would’ve been possible without the tech; we’ve formed friendships, made a real difference in others’ lives.

But in other ways, we’re more disconnected. Maybe not more so than before, but not in lesser proportion, either. And just like always, including before high tech, we don’t always realize it until something goes wrong.

This afternoon I found out that a man I knew and very much respected had committed suicide just a few hours previously. Trey Pennington was a wonderful, engaging person, one of the first to welcome me to Greenville’s professional community, and who always inspired me with his kindness and graciousness.

I watched the condolences and memories and expressions of grief spill over his Facebook page, my Twitter stream. Among them: “One of the worst things about social media is we can be surrounded by so many and still feel completely alone.”

Trey wasn’t a cop—he was a marketer who understood the great potential of social media and human relationships to marketing—but I’m writing about his death here because his depression and suicide mirror the pressures experienced (disproportionately so) in the law enforcement community.

Building the line stronger

Helplessness carries stigma. Especially for those sworn to protect and serve, to be a rock for people who have none, to admit weakness is to weaken the thin blue line. At least, that’s what a lot of people believe (including the officers who are afraid they’ll be fired, censured, reassigned or otherwise chastened for disclosing their problem).

Even apart from that, to ask for help is a risk. The risk you take that you’ll be rejected by those who are “more successful” or “too happy for me to bring them down” or “going places” or even simply “got enough to worry about” can seem unbearable. You don’t want to trouble them. And yes, there are some who will feel troubled, and will let you know.

But the fact is, leaving the weak to fend for themselves is what weakens the line. There are others, true friends, who will stand up and be the rock you need. They deserve the chance to do that for you.

We can do better, people. All our social connections mean nothing if we can’t come together and share our burdens, however heavy they are, and do it in a real and meaningful way. Meanwhile, for those who don’t have those connections, or can’t bring themselves to ask them:

If you’re in law enforcement and you feel suicidal, Safe Call Now was established specifically for public safety personnel, by public safety personnel. Call them. Especially if you don’t feel you can rely on those you’re closest to.

If you know someone in law enforcement (or any public safety profession) you are concerned about, contact Safe Call Now to find out how you might be able to help. Be brave. It can take a lot to help someone who is depressed. But it can mean a lot, too.

If you are a non-public-safety person reading this and you feel suicidal, but don’t feel as if you can reach out to those in your immediate network, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

(I know it can be hard to reach out to strangers. But in many ways, talking to a stranger who has no ties to you, no history and therefore no baggage, can help in ways you may not realize. It’s a different perspective, and their caring comes from a different place. So please call one of the above resources if you need to.)

None of us has to go through life alone, and none of us should die because we felt too alone to go on. Love social media or hate it, be the connections your friends and family and colleagues need—even if it doesn’t seem like they do.

photo credit: Alex E. Proimos

The venue: the 2-day Advanced Strategic Communications Seminar, “Social Media and Policing in the Digital Age,” of the BCACP-hosted Police Leadership 2011 Conference. The topic: “A Survey of Official and Unofficial Law Enforcement Twitter Accounts in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States.”

The original plan was to divide the talk in half. Lead researcher and coauthor Laura Madison would present an overview of the study and its findings, and I would follow up with a short discussion on the floor about how the conference participants might put (or already were putting) this stuff to work for themselves.

Laura couldn’t make it, but thanks to her fantastic Prezi (below), I was able to deliver her half of the presentation with no trouble. If this is the first you’ve seen it, please find our study so you can follow along.

My half of the presentation involved an interactive session, in which I asked conference participants to talk about their experiences in context of what we’d studied and presented:

We didn’t have a ton of time for an in-depth discussion, but I believe it was enough for participants to think about. Some highlights:

The force of personality

One of the most important questions involved the balance between humor/personality and official business. Both I and keynote Deputy Chief Constable Gordon Scobbie (who, as social media lead for UK police, has a wealth more experience than I do) tried to explain in context of Twitter accounts like @TrafficServices and @SuptPayneWMP, but this probably could have taken an entire session in itself!

Suffice to say, feeds that read like they’re off the screens of computer aided dispatch systems are boring. To draw out the old analogy of a cocktail party, a CAD-like feed is the equivalent of some guy standing in the corner droning. He may think his information is necessary and important, but no one else will.

The bottom line is to make the information compelling, to mix official messaging with a personal view of police work. While it’s pat to say “have a conversation,” we see accounts that do this quite well – both from individual officers and from official agency accounts.

Social crime reporting

Another participant asked about crime reporting via social media. The upshot: have a policy. Whether you accept crime reports via social channels or not, you need to communicate this clearly to your fans and followers. Very few of the accounts we studied actually did this, though a few told their followers to call 911 or Crime Stoppers with incident reports and tips.

Additionally, the policy you create should be fluid enough to change. Whether your agency adds social media officers over time, enabling you and them to take social crime reports; or conversely, that social crime reports are overwhelming, your policy (and the training and communication that go with it) should adapt accordingly.

(Want to read more about social crime reporting? I wrote about it in the Winter 2011 issue of the National White Collar Crime Center’s Informant.)

The Twitter conversation

While all this was going on, naturally, there was a conversation happening on Twitter. Using the hashtag #plc2011van, conference participants talked with (and were retweeted by) others who were off-site.

One conversation that stuck out: a chat I had following the conference, with a web manager in England. Sasha Taylor chairs the National Police Web Managers Group, and he contributed some thoughts to an element of Laura’s and my presentation: when police tweeters engage in “endless self-congratulatory tweeting.”

The point I was trying to make: that it is important for an agency to tell its own story, especially if its relationship with the media has not been good… but not at its community’s expense. It’s important to listen and understand how the public – especially, as Sasha pointed out, those who have been victims or do not get service due to service priorities – view the police department, before telling the story. Otherwise, the attempts at engagement will only drive a bigger wedge between public and police.

Neither, however, should listening take precedence over engagement, as Sasha also noted. Only through engagement can a police department fully understand how it is viewed. While I don’t recommend only using Twitter for this purpose, I do think it’s a good and convenient platform for those who use it, and should be treated as such.

Have you read the study? How would you respond to the questions Laura and I posed?

CJS Online has informational pages related to criminal justice schools, degrees and careers, together with a blog that discusses a wide variety of topics, from current events to opinion from police chiefs and other leaders. State-specific pages discuss the outlook for criminal justice practitioners in each state (including labor and salary statistics).

While it would be good to see it become more specific — the “Computer Forensics Degree” page lists generic CJ degrees rather than computer forensics degrees, and state pages should list state schools and community colleges — it does have good, accurate overview information about many fields that are not commonly considered in criminal justice. In this economy, prospective students who don’t want to “push a cruiser” might consider becoming a conservation officer, forensic nurse, or retail loss prevention specialist.

Thanks to the editorial team at Criminal Justice Schools Online for this honor. We’re looking forward to seeing what’s next from you!

Yes folks, more changes are afoot as of today, Cops 2.0’s second birthday. First, it has returned stateside after its brief run as official blog of the Canadian Association of Police on Social Media. CAPSM founding members realized that they needed a blog that more accurately reflected Canadian laws, culture, and policing; Cops 2.0’s content, however, had been mainly US-focused. CAPSM also thought it made sense for all their content to be housed in one place, which you’ll be able to find at capsm.ca/blog.

I continue to support CAPSM’s research and other work, and am very pleased to have had the opportunity to partner with them. This was a valuable learning experience for both of us — namely, that you can’t always know whether something will work until you actually try it. And then, even if it doesn’t work the way you thought it would, you must tweak.

Which brings me to the second change: scope. When I read articles like this one, which note a statistic that 81% of 700+ U.S. law enforcement agencies are using social media, I can’t help but think back to when I said I was bored with social media.

You see, there are only so many times you can read about some agency’s new Facebook or Twitter account. While these uses are important, they are not and should not be the end of a law enforcement agency’s social media use. That use is in flux, as Gov2.0 blogger Lovisa Williams points out, and the best people to manage that flux are the front-liners themselves.

A number of good blogs and conferences have stepped up to address this, not the least of which is the IACP itself. I think they all have “law enforcement + social media” pretty well covered.

Meanwhile, the more entrenched I become in helping my corporate clients figure out how to use social media, the more I learn about how these tools integrate with other technology and other forms of communication — and how the communication impacts my clients’ business goals.

Cops 2.0’s tagline has therefore changed from “branding police work via social media” to “Communications, Technology & Service.” I want to hear about police technology use in its many different forms, online or offline, and how it impacts communications with your communities, be they on social media or through more traditional channels.

I believe this is the best way to continue to deliver the same high quality content you’ve always gotten, whether it comes weekly or monthly, or somewhere in between. If you want to contribute, so much the better — just let me know.

Meanwhile, thanks for sticking with me over two years. I’m looking forward to the next steps the third year brings!

photo credit: schjlatah

It will be linked in the sidebar as well as in this post so that you can find it easily anytime you want. Meanwhile, we’d love to hear your feedback — please be sure to leave us a comment!

Survey of Official & Unofficial Law Enforcement Twitter Accounts in Canada, the United Kingdom, & the Unite…

Central to Toronto Police Services’ success: careful planning and execution before, during, and even after the summit. Cops 2.0 authors Laura Madison and Christa Miller talked with three people heavily involved in these activities – Marco Battilana, Constable Wendy Drummond, and Sgt. Tim Burrows.

Planning: People

During the G20, the Public Information Unit (PIU)‘s normal approach to communication – one Burrows calls “multi-pronged,” involving both internal and external public relations – changed.

“A multi member team made up of representatives from the Integrated Security Unit (ISU) Partners and many police services across Ontario formed the information team,” says Burrows. “We all worked together across mainstream and social media venues to bring up to date information to all members of our communities.”

The TPS officers’ roles did not change by much. Although all can use social media in the course of their duties, only two – Burrows and Constable Scott Mills – focus their energy on its use. (Burrows, who works with the Traffic Services Unit, describes his role as “parallel” to the PIU.)

“Scott Mills has been identified as the Social Media Officer for the Service and he works in the PIU offices with the other Media Relations and Public Information Officers,” Burrows says. During the G20, Burrows and Mills were assigned social media tasks, each officer working a 12-hour shift so that the TPS could provide 24-hour coverage and monitoring of social media platforms.

Likewise, the other officers generally stuck with their usual tasks. For example, Drummond says her role as media relations officer makes her more hands-on: “responsible for liaising with the media on a daily basis, providing updates on current investigations, and creating public safety alerts to ensure the public is armed with information to which they can adjust their own actions and decisions.”

But because the TPS was part of a much larger ISU, these roles still needed the guidance of someone skilled in directing large-scale public communications efforts. That fell to Marco Battilana, a web communication strategist with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) E Division. In that role for about two years, Battilana had been called to Vancouver to assist the ISU in charge of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Overseer of both internet and intranet environments, he had developed the V2010 ISU website and social media presences from scratch, maintained the intranet site, and monitored and reported on each environment’s analytics, along with other duties. These duties were similar to what he does for the RCMP E Division, where he also trains media relations officers on content management.

The experience led to his being called on for the Toronto ISU. “With V2010 ISU, I already had an idea of what types of social media personas there would be: Supportive Government Partners, Anti-Establishment, enthusiasts, media, etc.

“Even before 2010, I had already been monitoring Beijing 2008’s social media efforts and was formulating how to improve. Having an idea of the different personas definitely helped me with planning my G8 / G20 experience and how the G8 / G20 ISU Public Affairs Communications Team (PACT) could have a positive influence for all involved.”

Battilana’s role, then, was not so much one of authority as one of guidance. “We all did the same social media monitoring when it came to the duties at the time,” he explains. “I merely gave my suggestions based on my expertise and experience.

“The other members had already established the social media monitoring and it was working very well. I simply wanted to take it one step further and be truly interactive with the public: [to achieve] two-way communication between the G8 / G20 ISU and the public and/or media.

“Scott and Tim were a great asset as they had already been living and breathing this. Their Twitter and Facebook accounts were already doing what I thought the G8 / G20 ISU should be doing, so it simply solidified the success of what was to come.”

Planning: The Event

The G20 was, perhaps not coincidentally, planned to immediately follow the G8 summit. However, says Drummond, while the city had plenty of time to plan for the G8, police were only notified of the G20 plans in February 2010.

“With not as much time to prepare as there was for the G8, planning went into full speed ahead,” she says. “Communications was key, and working with the communities that were going to be affected directly as a result of their proximity to the Metro Convention Centre, was paramount.

Despite TPS’ documented success with social media use, the ISU had little to draw on in terms of other G20 responders’ experiences. Nevertheless, says Drummond, “We knew that we were going to have to reach thousands of people to deliver several messages prior to and during the summits, and that is where social media assisted our Public Affairs Communications Team.”

This, she adds, ended up being one of the few things about back-to-back summits that was not costly and challenging. “Through the use of social media, we were able to communicate effectively out of one location, and social media, as you know, can be done anywhere, at anytime, reaching a large number of people, all at once.”

Exercises are important to planning for emergency or other critical situations. Historically, they include traditional media (including misinformation) and other elements that make for a scenario that is as accurate as possible.

However, while G20 exercises mentioned social media, practical exercises were not included. “This is a type of training that could be used to effectively answer questions to unforeseen problems and train officers to recognize the best practices to dealing with issues that could come up during real events,” Burrows acknowledges.

On the other hand, says Drummond, many elements of communication during the G20 were unexpected. “Being able to respond to questions and inform people as to what to expect is a lot different then dealing with public reaction and criticism,” she explains.

“Some of the messaging that we expected to be an issue with the public was not, and other issues felt to be moot became daily topics! Such as the removal of small trees to allow for the helicopter to land.”

Battilana, at the time still involved with the V2010, could not directly participate in the pre-event planning. Still, he says, “The PACT communication plan initially mirrored the V2010 ISU social media plan. When I arrived, I made some suggestions for monitoring. Tweetdeck was currently being used by the social media team, which worked. I suggested also using Hootsuite as a primary monitoring tool, which we did with great success. Facebook to Twitter was also utilized.”

While the use of these tools was so successful that Battilana says he would continue in the same vein, he cautions against overdependence on them. “What’s more important is keep on top of what tools are being used at the time. Who knows what will be around in five years. The key is to stay aware.”

Addressing violence and public anxiety

Protestor violence in other cities meant that in Toronto, messaging would have to take high emotions into account. “Social media was known to have been in use by protestors, both peaceful and not in previous summits,” says Burrows, “so its use was recognized as a valuable communication tool from the very beginning. [We used it] to monitor protest movements, inform and educate the public and to answer concerns and questions.”

One key example: “A couple of weeks prior to the G20, the ISU held a Technical Briefing, putting on display the many specialized units and equipment that was expected to be used, including the controversial LRAD [Long Range Acoustic Device],” says Drummond.

“This briefing was very beneficial as it somewhat set the stage for what people could expect to see, and really, be able to get their heads around the fact that there was gong to be such a large increase of police presence on the streets of Toronto.”

Burrows adds: “The information we gave to the public about the LRAD was designed to show how it is a very effective communication tool in times of mass gatherings where clear communication is so important.”

“This generated much discussion and talk on social media sites,” says Drummond. “We posted a lot of video explaining the duties and responsibilities of the different units, and the function of LRAD. This also in turn allowed the public to express their concerns and distrust in the use of the LRAD.”

Which, says Burrows, there was plenty of. “The public was very concerned about the use of the LRAD from what they saw at the Pittsburgh G20 summit. The ISU was intent on letting the public know that we were going to use it for communication and not as a weapon. Our plans never varied and as people understood the use of the tool and how the ISU was to use it, the fear was truly unfounded.”

Ultimately, says Drummond, planning for social media use need not be complicated. “As a law enforcement agency we fall within the realm of public safety and are required to abide by certain guidelines and requirements, but the forum in which the information is delivered is unique and needs to be specific to address individual audiences in order to maximize the effectiveness of the communications,” she explains.

For example, Battilana adds, says Police Services’ emphasis on two-way social media communication was much more developed than it had been for V2010. “The response was something that I wanted to see happen just like how the PACT would release media lines,” he explains. “We’d have the same vetting, approval and release, except not as verbose. Really though, it all comes down to effective communication. And that’s what the PACT was wanting to achieve with SM, and I believe that is what we all did.”

Social Media During the G20

Social tools were not only valuable as communications modes. They also proved critical for intelligence-gathering and investigations. “Being able to provide information confidentially to police through different social media sites has increased the amount of tips received,” says Drummond.

“On the flip side to that, people have a tendency to have tunnel vision when posting things on sites, feeling faceless and untraceable. It is with those postings that we were able to use our talent and use the information posted to our advantage. It allowed our officers to monitor public sites that protestors were using to share information.”

Battilana adds, “The tips that came in before and during [the summits] were hit or miss. Some were factual and some were not. We still managed to follow up on all the information we received.

“It definitely became more of a challenge for the PACT the closer to the summit we got. As the summit was more on the public’s mind, we’d end up with more and more social media activity. Hence, we really had to focus on disseminating the incoming information.”

How physical locations impacted communication

Two complicating factors: first, PACT staff were not all located in Toronto; they were also posted in the Ontario cities of Barrie and Huntsville. Second, Drummond notes that with regard to Huntsville and Toronto particularly, communications had to take into account very different demographics.

“Toronto, being a very urban setting, the majority of the population is tech savvy and the use of social media is much more prevalent,” she explains. “Huntsville, however, is a smaller town, where the population is older and reliant on traditional forms of media such as TV, radio and print.”

To deal with such disparate modes of communication, police went slightly lower tech: the telephone. “We had two phone numbers, one for the media and one for the public,” says Drummond. These calls came into Toronto, where the phones were manned 24 hours. “The responses were coordinated with PACT members in Barrie to maintain continuity with responses given by Toronto media officers and those posted in Huntsville.”

Burrows was one of the officers posted to Toronto. “The call volume was extremely heavy during the summits but during the G20 in particular,” he says. “While maintaining the continuity with a mass team will always be a challenge, our call centre supervisors held regular briefings and we were in constant contact with the ISU communications team leadership to ensure that we were all on the same page at all times.”

Managing communications breakdowns

Drummond says the most frustrating part of her experience involved breakdowns in communication. “Being in a position were you speak on behalf of the ISU is one that comes with the expectation of perfection, which is far from ever happening,” she explains. “No matter how you deliver some information, it will always be scrutinized and twisted.

“The amount to which you are able to control and rectify this, and continue to deliver the message that you want to be heard, is the challenge. Something that I learned very quickly in all of the G20 was how fast people post information, regardless of whether it had been verified or not. You may end up spending a lot of time correcting such postings!”

Roundtable discussions ensured message accuracy, and also helped communicators anticipate questions “to minimize the surprise moments,” says Burrows. “Accuracy always has to win out over immediacy. There is no problem verifying what live media may be showing. It’s obvious by the pictures what is happening.

“The danger is when the media or the public leads the information stream and looks for verification on their perspective, as opposed to deterring the facts and providing the most accurate information from the voices of authority.”

Drummond says that this is an opportunity for an aspect of the job that is most rewarding: “Being misquoted or having your comments be taken out of context is a great place for social media to step in. When you have written something and posted it publicly reduced the ability to alter your message.”

The worth of social media during large-scale events

Battilana agrees. “In my opinion, I think the PACT definitely achieved our objective of effective communications, in relation to a social media perspective. As more news agencies started to continuously follow us via social media as the summit drew near, we were able to have more of an influence on what the media were portraying.

“An example being people tweeting that the security fence was breached at a specific location, which then showed up on a certain news channel. Once we looked up the location referenced in the tweet, we realized that the location didn’t even have a security fence present. So, we tweeted that there was no fence breach occurring, as there was no fence at that location, and the news updated their report.”

This, Battilana adds, typifies how social media proved its worth. “I’ve seen people try to quantify the exact return on investment of social media when planning, and I believe this is why some people don’t believe in its influence,” he says.

“If we could achieve these types of results in regards to the G8 /G20 and what the mainstream media was reporting on in the matter of a week, just imagine what continued success we could have in the future. All it takes is someone with the courage and vision to see the true benefits of social media and to have the right people execute the plan accordingly.”

Drummond agrees. “Having a well established following, experienced and knowledgeable communicators, and a Service that recognizes the value in social media and its importance was key to the success of social media during the summits of 2010,” she says.

“Without the experience and following that both Tim and Scott have as figures in law enforcement, I don’t think we would have been as successful in reaching so many people and engaging them in dialogue or just making people aware of preparations and planning.”

To these thoughts adds Burrows: “One important point to remember is that there will always be members of society that don’t agree with anything that law enforcement does. That becomes intensified and multiplied with political events.

“It is paramount to recognize that you will never be able to appease everyone. The difference between five years ago and today is that social media have made it possible for those people to gather together on line and increase their voice and their position. Law enforcement must do the same, work together, increase our voice and always present the truth with accuracy and transparency.”

photo credit: steelerdan

photo credit: steelerdan

photo credit: PastePie

photo credit: OMouse

photo credit: Aramil Liadon

photo credit: Subterranean Tourist Board

Wikis can be used for public or internal messaging

From the Hawaiian word for “fast,” the wiki is perhaps best exemplified in Wikipedia… but is not limited to the long, sprawling, and not always accurate encyclopedic entries found there.

At least one law enforcement agency is using it as a way of both public and internal messaging, in the kind of model that might just make a team approach to social media easier for administrators to consider.

Public outreach

Readers who have visited “About You” will recognize John Fulton’s name from the comments. Administrative sergeant with the St. Clair County (Illinois) Sheriff’s Office, Fulton has been handling social media efforts including the agency blog.

The department website’s wiki takes Frequently Asked Questions a step further, not in terms of content, but in terms of platform. Found at http://sheriff.pbworks.com/, the wiki is maintained by both Fulton and one of the patrol sergeants, his predecessor at the administrative desk.

A mix of conventional FAQ-type information and longer articles from the news or the blog, the wiki took about a month to build “on and off,” says Fulton. Now running, it takes very little time to maintain.

Internal messaging

What has been more useful, Fulton says, is the agency’s internal wiki, which he uses to post general orders. “We decided to use a wiki because the first time general orders come out, someone always complains about something that’s wrong,” he explains. “Then emails and paper have to be passed around for approvals.”

The wiki, however, gives all the supervisors and commanders the chance to make changes as they see fit. “There’s a revision history, so if they come back and say ‘I didn’t mean to post that,’ it’s clear that they did,” Fulton says.

Officers do not have access, but can see all orders via PDF and then ask their supervisors questions if need be. It’s possible to track that they reviewed the PDF—and recently, they’ve even been able to incorporate quizzes so that officers can show they are paying attention.

These measures are important because of the reliance on a technology which has been criticized for its “too many cooks” collaborative ideal.  Still, as Wikipedia itself notes:

The Wikipedia model allows anyone to edit, and relies on a large number of well-intentioned editors to overcome issues raised by a smaller number of problematic editors. It is inherent in Wikipedia’s editing model that poor information can be added, but over time quality is anticipated to improve in a form of group learning as editors reach consensus, so that substandard edits will very rapidly be removed. This assumption is still being tested, and its limitations and reliability are not yet a settled matter.

St. Clair’s model, then, makes sense because it preserves and supports the chain of command. Patrol officers are notorious for complaining about policy that doesn’t fit their reality on the streets, but staying on top of their edits could end up taking more time. They should, however, be able to approach their supervisors to make changes.

The technical stuff

“For a small department with no IT department, we have to be able to do what we can with off-the-shelf and free stuff,” Fulton says. “If we had to buy a system, we wouldn’t have it.”

One thing that has been useful, however, is Fulton’s relationship with the county IT administrator, who not only built the internal wiki but also created the quizzes and a couple of other department tools. “He liked the challenge of meeting our needs,” says Fulton.

Although he can’t estimate how much time the wiki saves, Fulton says he definitely spends less time working on general orders. That frees him to work on other administrative tasks, including other elements of the St. Clair SO’s social strategy.

In what ways could your agency benefit from wikis?

Image: blogefl vi Flickr

The implications for online investigation are clear. If you can archive a website, preserving it with incriminating (or exculpatory) evidence the way you found it, you can make cases that way. Right?

Yes. Absolutely. But a third party storing evidence opens the door to reasonable doubt. How can you, the law enforcement officer, prove that no data went unchanged while the evidence was stored out of your direct control? (Chain of custody; evidence preservation.)

I debated with myself over whether to post this, because even if I disclose that I work for a maker of online evidence collection software, “conflict of interest” gives way to “selling something.” Not a comfortable position to be in.

And yet, I believe in what my client does. That’s why I signed with them. And I’d be remiss as a blogger if I didn’t draw attention to something that solves a problem for my community of readers.

Therefore:

Got WebCase?

Websites have a bad habit of changing content, especially when you least need or expect them to. They might undergo a redesign and lose the article you needed to find, or the server they’re hosted on goes down, or their owner might let the domain registration lapse.

Or they could be a social networking site, with status updates and tweets disappearing after a matter of days.

Forensic collection of evidence has always depended on the ability of the collector to preserve the evidence as it was at the time of collection. A bloodstained shirt goes into a properly sealed and marked paper bag, and is logged along the chain of custody until it gets to the analyst. A hard drive is imaged and likewise logged until a digital forensic examiner analyzes that image.

How do you do this with Internet evidence? A lot of investigators simply screenshot a website or capture its video. If that content is taken down or changed between the time it was collected and court, there’s no way to prove it ever existed as it did when you saw it. (Even the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is limited.) Again: reasonable doubt.

There’s a much longer story that goes into Vere Software’s making of WebCase, but in essence, it splices together legal expectation with commonly accepted digital forensic methodology by not just archiving, but also date/time stamping and hashing (“digitally fingerprinting”) the website content as evidence.

It then goes a step further by providing a way to show all this in court in a way that average jurors, attorneys, and judges can understand—visually, sometimes auditorially.

Can vs. should

Can you get away with screenshots and video captures? Sure. I can’t think of current or recent cases that made challenges to this kind of evidence… but that doesn’t mean they aren’t coming, as soon as defense attorneys and judges get savvy. I’m not sure that will take long. They’re already trying to figure out what to do about tweeting jurors and judges on Facebook.

Cops are so frequently accused of taking shortcuts, meanwhile, with investigations. Especially when it comes to evidence collection and preservation. And while digital evidence can be complicated, WebCase wasn’t designed for analysts. It was designed for average investigators, who deserve to be able to show in court how law enforcement takes case-building as seriously as we want you to.

So please head on over to the Vere Software website and download the 30-day free demo of WebCase, along with the various free tools offered. Subscribe to the blog, check out the free e-learning. No, I’m not getting paid for this post, nor based on sales that come from this post. Yes, I understand that budgets are strapped. Believe me.

At the same time, though, a good friend of mine secured two copies of WebCase not long before the union in his department voted to forego pay raises just to keep its gang unit rather than see it disbanded. That town is facing serious gang problems, and given that gangs are using social networking sites to do their business, the fact that this agency found the money for WebCase is significant.

What kinds of online evidence is your agency seeing?

Image: NIOSH via Flickr