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Greater Manchester Police joining with forces across the globe #poltwt

Almost two-and-a-half years ago Greater Manchester Police (GMP) carried out the first Twitter day #GMP24 when all the calls received were tweeted during a 24 hour period. Since then GMP has been developing its use of social media and now has around 180 neighbourhood officers who are providing updates to their communities using social networks.

On Friday 22 March 2013, GMP will support the global police twitter day that is taking place and already has a number of law enforcement agencies and individuals involved. So, what has changed in the past two years?

This time GMP has a network of more than 180 police officers and police community support officers who are tweeting updates to their neighbourhoods day in and day out. These officers have embraced the use of social media to start conversations with local people and are seeing the operational benefits of these connections.

In fact officers and staff across the organisation now see social media as another channel for communication and are using it on a daily basis. In 2010 it had a novelty factor but in 2013 it is quite simply what we do. It has become so mainstream that we are discussing it at senior level meetings and are introducing it into the policing performance discussion.

There are also more networks and opportunities that exist now and can be utilised from Audioboo to Pinterest and Storify to our very own GMP app. More than 9,000 people have downloaded the GMP app that was launched for the iPhone in January this year. It provides instant access to details of what is happening where you are using geo-location technology.

In 2010 we took a brave step in starting to use social media for the Twitter day and it started many discussions among police and law enforcement agencies. On Friday we will take part but in a more mature way. We will have neighbourhood officers providing updates about their work to make the areas safer; we will be providing updates on calls received and details of the numbers of arrests during the day. There will be a two hour #askGMP session for all those questions people have about policing.

But this isn’t just about the police telling people what they are doing. GMP has recruited its first community reporters who are members of the public that will go on patrol with neighbourhood officers and then provide updates about what they found, what they made of the events, and what it made them feel. Two of these reporters will be with officers on Friday and we hope that they will add their views to the Tweet-a-thon that starts at 8am.

I hope that the global nature of Friday’s activity will capture people’s imagination in the same way the original Twitter day did back in October 2010.

Twitter: fact or fiction?

A colleague of mine recently raised this question with me. With all of the information on social media, how does one possibly figure out what is true and what is false? In the middle of an emergency or ‘breaking news’ especially, how do people follow Twitter…a forum where anyone in the world can post whatever they want, any time they want.

Unfortunately, from both a communications perspective and a social media perspective, I laughed. That’s a rhetorical question, no? Isn’t the answer obvious….do you really believe everything you read, see, hear?

But then I realized he was quite serious and, in fairness, he probably represents a good majority of the people we’re trying to reach: people who aren’t necessarily experts in social media but recognize it as a source for information.

When I took a moment to recognize the sincerity of his query, I realized he was right. How do we know? Truth be told, I told him, we don’t.

That’s why as law enforcement agencies, it’s our responsibility to fill that space with accurate, reliable and timely information. During an emergency or ‘breaking news’, your coordinated communications efforts should automatically include the use of social media.

Consider creating a hashtag, inviting your partners, sending the message to the community that they can follow you for accurate, reliable and timely information.

Most importantly, you better match actions to words. Post regular messages – even if it is just to say “we have no new information at this time”. Respond, if it’s appropriate, to erroneous information. Reply to questions. Challenge myths and rumours.

If we want people to use social media to engage with us, then we better be the ones to fill the space with information they can rely on. What’s the point of encouraging the community, or your own members for that matter, to use social media if it’s not being used in an effective way? Yes, it should be the public’s responsibility to seek out accurate and reliable information. But it should be our responsibility to provide it in the first place.

Meaghan Gray

Meaghan Gray

Meaghan played a leading role on the Service’s Social Media Working Group. With her colleagues, the Toronto Police Service developed a corporate social media strategy which will expand the way the Service uses these platforms to support communications and community engagement. The strategy involved almost every area of the Service and resulted in policy, guidelines, and training in the use of social media.

Meaghan received her Bachelor of Arts in Political Studies from Queen’s University and her Corporate Communications Certificate from George Brown College.

She can be reached at meaghan.gray@torontopolice.on.ca or @mrsmeaghangray on Twitter.

Social media is critical to police IT systems dealing with newsworthy issues

Hold the front page

Crime has always been front page news.

Always sold newspapers.

The advent of TV – remember the real time coverage of OJ Simpson’s arrest – accelerated the speed with which news spread:

And social media has ensured that bad news goes global in minutes – as anyone following the Oscar Pistorius case can testify.

Let social media bear the weight

The always-on, global thirst for bad news can cause problems for police forces who need to appeal for information in high profile cases.

A simple post for information on a force website can spread virally within minutes and become global news with the result that the website crashes under the weight of public interest.

An example was the murder of Joanna Yeates over the Christmas period in 2010.

Even though Avon & Somerset Police rented additional infrastructure, the website crashed at peak times as information was requested about her whereabouts.

The force opted to use a set of social media networks to publish important information.

YouTube was used as the network to distribute CCTV footage with requests for information.

Information about the case was also published on Twitter and Facebook.

All these global social media networks have massive infrastructures which can better balance localised high loads.

Social media therefore becomes an important communications tool for small forces with high-newsworthy stories.

But it is also relevant for large-scale emergencies.

Identifying rioters

During and after the 2011 riots in London, the Metropolitan police used Flickr to publish images of suspects.

With announcements on Twitter, the photos were extremely popular.

The Met uploaded a first batch of images on August 9, 2012 at 12 noon.

By midnight the same day, they had been viewed more than 4 million times.

Indeed, this level of interest even caused Flickr some problems.

The Met’s website traffic increased dramatically during and just after the riots.

Hosting images on a separate server through Flickr helped ensure their site was not overloaded and could run at optimal levels, ensuring the public could still access information on how the police were dealing the riots and public safety information about what they should do.

The advent of social media means that police can request and broadcast information much more quickly with a considerably greater reach without additional and expensive investment in technology.

Making the Good Better – Maximizing Available P25 Spectrum

New advancement to P25 Phase 2 technology improves interoperability in a cost-efficient manner.

Image from Hendon Pub

The APCO Project 25 (P25) Phase 2 standard is now ready for critical communications users. This further advancement of P25 was intended to improve upon the digital public safety radio communications standards used by first-responders, homeland security, emergency response professionals, and other agencies.

A natural progression from Phase 1 standards, P25 Phase 2 creates improved spectrum efficiency through two-slot Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) technology. It enables multiple transmissions over the same channel for better use of limited spectrum resources. In many large systems with a high number of subscribers, P25 Phase 2 can boost spectral efficiency of the system without any compromise of coverage or functionality.

As new and advanced as it is, many communications companies are taking basic elements of the Phase 2 standard and improving upon them. For instance, Harris engineers have expanded the capability of the standard Dynamic Dual Mode (DDM) technology that it uses in its P25 products. (Standard Dynamic Dual Mode (DDM) allows Phase 1 and Phase 2 users to interoperate in a mixed mode by “downgrading” the Phase 2 user to a phase 1 capability.)

Calling it Enhanced Dynamic Dual Mode (EDDM), the upgraded technology ensures efficient use of available channel resources. It provides users with improved interoperability and increased voice capacity on P25 systems using a mix of Phase 1 and Phase 2 radios.

Additionally, EDDM offers a cost-efficient, manageable, seamless, flexible migration path to P25 Phase 2 operation that supports an agency’s own pace, budget, and frequency availability. It does this while still taking advantage of the latest technology to deliver an optimal grade of service to meet the most demanding situations. In today’s economic climate, that is good news for any financially strapped department.

In improving DDM, EDDM provides several key advantages by actively determining the most effective path to process calls to maximize capacity. Rather than defaulting to the lowest common mode of operation across the entire system, EDDM actively analyzes the most effective mode of operation and allows for Phase 1 calls on one site to interoperate with Phase 2 calls on a different site, while utilizing the most capable P25 technology at each specific site.

The following example of a wide-area call placed by a Phase 2 unit on a Phase 2-only site shows how each participating site can use a different mode of operation, based on the capability of that site and the subscribing units.

With EDDM technology, transmissions made on a P25 Phase 1 site – using Phase 1 radios – will be Phase 1 calls. If the call includes another site that is Phase 2 and Phase 2 radios are participating, the system provides a Phase 2 call to that site. However, if a mixed-mode site that supports both Phase 1 and Phase 2 modes has only Phase 2 radios participating in the call, the system provides a Phase 2 call on that site, thereby maximizing channel efficiency and increasing overall system capacity. EDDM ensures automatic interoperability between P25 Phase 1 and Phase 2 technologies to deliver increased capacity for emergency, group, individual, encrypted, or ISSI calls.

I am heartened by the advances continually made in interoperable communications that not only make the jobs of first responders, emergency crews, law enforcement agencies and the like easier, but also afford them increased protection and information. I look forward to even more changes in the months ahead.

Smarter Approach to Public Safety Leads to Smarter Approach across Entire City

At last fall’s International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) conference, IBM previewed its new i2 Intelligent Law Enforcement offering. Billed as “the convenor of the ecosystem for public safety,” this new software solution promised to help law enforcement organizations bring down silos with Big Data capabilities that combined tactical lead generation, predictive policing and intelligence analysis.

Fast forward to today. IBM has announced a Smarter Cities initiative in partnership with Miami-Dade County that links the public safety with the city’s entire ecosystem of operations. With a focus on cutting across organizational boundaries to provide better services to residents, IBM is helping Miami-Dade County modernize and improve the predictive management capabilities of systems tied to law enforcement, transportation and water.

According to Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez, “Making Miami-Dade County more efficient and cutting the red tape that slows economic progress are priorities, and this initiative with IBM is a great way to accomplish both of those goals. We look forward to making vital data more accessible to our municipal partners and to serving our residents even better.”

In the Miami-Dade Police Department (MDPD), access to advanced analytics technology helps officers fight crime and ensure public safety. As one of the first law enforcement agencies in the nation to use an advanced crime data warehouse, MDPD has expanded its use of IBM technology to help officers and investigators make better decisions faster with a new ability to look for links among disparate crimes or situations and provide officers with a more complete view of a given situation. The system can link directly into park systems and other department operations for cross-agency collaboration and lead generation.

Using IBM SPSS predictive analytics, MDPD can bring together data in new ways to identify unique relationships and spot new and unknown patterns that have significant operational value for officers. The system can use information such as property stolen, time of day, weapon used, and victim details to model what kind of suspect typically commits a particular crime and then generate and filter a suspect list to help solve cases faster. This type of analysis can also be used to help predict, anticipate and prevent future events.

The IBM i2 Intelligent Law Enforcement solution builds on the MDPD’s existing technology investments and will provide MDPD with a holistic view across policing and justice partner agencies – removing barriers to information sharing and enabling agencies to focus solely on their mission of predicting, preventing and defeating criminals. It works by bringing together disparate data sets and allowing the entire department access to data they need, using officers’ time more effectively when they are looking for information. It will also incorporate MDPD’s existing use of predictive analytics for suspect lead detection.

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