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Most of us who are involved with social media at some point find ourselves on information overload. Links from Twitter and Facebook, Google Alerts, e-mail, RSS feed readers provide so much data that it’s tempting to close ourselves off and hide for at least a week.
However, even the most introverted of us are social creatures. The reason we came online to begin with was to find other people to relate to, build our own communities. We seek validation, security even. (Arguably, the familiarity we find is what leads us to post too much information.) We seek comfort.
What happens when we’re comfortable? The information becomes easier to manage. Just as our grandparents forged brand loyalty to a newspaper or TV news network, we associate with people who filter news in a way that resonates with us, with our own life circumstances—whose outlook based on experience mirrors ours.
With awareness comes cynicism
That’s why information isn’t just information. Just as importantly, it’s also opinions about the information. If TV brought new levels of awareness to previous generations, then social media brings new layers to those awareness levels. We now know not just a message; we also know what our friends think of the message from moment to moment.
The more people close ranks into comfortable, self-contained communities, then, the harder it is to get their attention. This is where master advertisers come in. They know how to manipulate emotion, play off people’s fears to inspire action.
They’d just better know which fears to get to, though, because all those messages have made the public more cynical than ever. Witness reaction to Hillary Clinton’s “3 a.m.” campaign ad: the return to Cold War-style paranoia did not win points.
We know which messages sound the same, which are designed to make us feel a certain way, especially when we don’t feel that way. We want to trust official messages less and less; for trustworthiness, we turn to each other. (This, incidentally, is how things “go viral.”)
How do communicators communicate?
This is the reason why so many organizations are jumping on Twitter and Facebook. It’s not just about finding another broadcast point; it’s about gaining access to people’s trusted networks, becoming part of their filtered information stream.
Yet communicators have a double-edged challenge: cut through the noise and cut through the comfort zone. Because not only does the sheer amount of information coming at us mean there’s no time to think critically; learning to build community to help us filter it means, in effect, we’re trusting other people to do our thinking for us.
And if we’re doing that, then your message about teen drinking and driving, domestic violence, or child pornography won’t get through. At this point, communication becomes an intricate dance:
- You must interact with the people whose stream you’re part of, provide consistently good information.
- Become trusted and trustworthy; people tune out shock value, but will tune into serious information once they trust you’re trying to help them solve problems, not just manipulating their fears. (Whether you can follow through should never even be a question.)
- Accepting that there will always be skeptics, you learn to work with the believers, trusting them to carry your message through to others.
Inspiring action
People operate under their own worldview within their own communities, both online and off. They attach stigma to domestic violence, child pornography, drug abuse, anything “other.”
And so when it comes to educating people about crime, law enforcement might succeed in some quarters; but getting people to do anything about it is quite another matter. The “call to action” involves asking them to think about what they are willing to do. And so perhaps social media’s true promise is in making it easier to change minds and hearts.
Social change happens when people face each other with uncomfortable truths and refuse to back down, not to manipulate, but because it’s about humans looking out for other humans. When a cop who’s entrenched in a cause s/he feels deeply about, it shows. In Toronto (Ontario), Sgt. Tim Burrows is passionate about traffic safety. Now-retired Sgt. Paul Gillespie is passionate about taking down child pornographers.
Look around your agency. Who’s passionate about gang violence? Domestic violence? Mental health intervention? Identity theft? What if they were able to take those passions online, get the public’s attention, get them to filter out all the noise and start thinking about how they could help each other?
You just might start to get some problems solved in your community.
Christa M. Miller is founder and co-author of Cops 2.0, http://cops2point0.com. As a freelance trade journalist turned public relations professional, she has specialized in public safety issues for the past eight years. She resides in Greenville, SC and can be reached at christammiller@gmail.com.
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Jeffery Dahmer
Although the bulk of this presentation consisted of the two presenters, PIOs in large cities, telling stories about serial killers, there were some great nuggets that could be culled from the presentation as a whole. Here are some helpful messages for law enforcement public information officers not only for serial killer coverage, but for public relations in general.
Go out early, control the message—If you are the first to break the story to the media (instead of the media breaking it for you) you can control the message. Once the media breaks a story for you, you have to play catch up, and you have lost control of your message.
If you’re explaining, you’re losing—If you find yourself having to explain your department’s actions and decisions on a case, you’ve lost control of your message. Again, make sure you are in front of the story so you don’t end up having to explain after the fact.
Provide visuals—if you give the media the visuals, you are controlling the message.
Dig up your own dirt before someone else digs it up for you—when you are about to go public with a story like this, make sure you know about all previous contacts the killer has had with law enforcement and why the killer was not caught sooner. Make sure to answer those questions yourself before someone else does.
Beware of the blame game—in an investigation like this, the media may want to blame law enforcement for not catching the killer sooner, mishandling the investigation, and more. Make sure you don’t play that game. Don’t start pointing fingers within your department or at the media.
One other lesson that was reiterated throughout the presentation was the importance of communicating with victim’s families before the media does. Not only does this make your department look good when reporters are not the first people to contact victim’s families, but it gives victims families hope that their loved one’s killer will be caught and creates good will with them to continue working with your department throughout the investigation.
Panelists:
Mary Grady, Public Information Director II, Los Angeles PD
Anne Schwartz, Communication Director, Milwaukee PD
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Two police chiefs and a deputy commissioner for a state police force presented case studies of incidents that happened in their departments and how their communities had lost trust in law enforcement as a result. The bulk of their individual sections were about how they dealt with the incidents in order to rebuild community trust. Here are a few main takeaways:
Clear Guidelines and Practices—One of the worst things a department can do to break community trust is to not be consistent and fair in all their internal affairs investigations. If you are consistent then the public will trust you.
Community Outreach and Education—As one panelist said, “It’s not about what you are doing to solve the problem, it’s what you tell the public you are doing” that builds trust. If you are pouring time, money, and resources into solving an issue, and the public doesn’t know about it, they still won’t trust you. You have to give the public a clear picture of your plan to deal with the situation and let them know how the investigation and reforms are coming.
Transparency and Open Communication—Again, the more you communicate with the public, the more trust they will have trust in you and your department. If you provide the public with progress reports and a clear line of communication they won’t feel like you are hiding anything or are purposely keeping them in the dark.
Independent Oversight of Internal Affairs—Why should the public trust an internal affairs investigation, if your department does not answer to anyone outside the department? Creating independent oversight committees lets the public know that you are being fair, honest, and open.
“If we don’t take care of business, others will”—Basically, if you are not putting the practices and policies in place for a solid, open, and fair internal affairs department someone else will. Maybe it will be a lawyer who sues the department. Maybe it will be a civil rights or police “watchdog” group. Maybe it will be the city council or state legislature. If you are transparent about your practices and have real, efficient practices and policies in place, others will see that you have things under control and won’t try to do your reform for you.
Overall, the main theme of the session was that internal affairs is a tool for public trust. The public trusts organizations that can take care of their own problems through transparent, consistent, processes with independent, external oversight. Those practices combined with community outreach and education give the public avenues to pursue complaints, get information, and feel that their department is working for them and with them, not against them.
Panelists:
John Brown, Deputy Commissioner Pennsylvania State Police
John Firman, Director, Research Division, IACP
Mark Perez, Deputy Chief, Professional Standards Bureau, Los Angeles Police Department
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I received an email this morning from a reader who, contrary to previous articles posted here at The Crime Map, expressed that surveillance cameras DO, in fact, prevent crime. He added that cameras prevent crime by putting criminals behind bars, preventing them from re-offending.
Surveillance
Although it is certainly true that surveillance cameras, or CCTV, have helped catch criminals in the past (keeping them off the street), many citizens and lawmakers questions the overall effectiveness of a surveillance camera system. For example, a recent story published by the BBC stated that for every 1,000 cameras in London, only one criminal was caught with the technology last year. However, with over 1 million cameras, that still adds up to 1,000 criminals caught with the aid of CCTV. But, are 1,000 criminals worth the 500 million pounds spent on maintaining the cameras every year? The number spent on maintaining the system equates out to 500,000 British pounds per criminal caught last year, which converts to over $833,000 per criminal in US dollars.
In America, a system that spent $833,000 to catch one criminal would be deemed a huge waste of taxpayer money. Despite the fact that a significant amount of criminals are caught by surveillance cameras, the amount of resources it takes to install and maintain the technology far outweighs the comparatively small return.
Communication
But there might be better ways to put our tax dollars to work. Although the invention of cameras have allowed police to watch more of our neighborhoods from afar, and patrol cars have given police the ability to move faster and cover larger areas, police are less and less inclined to actually build relationships with members of the community. Lawrence Sherman, quoted in Peter Moskos’ book, Cop in the Hood: My Year Policing Baltimore’s Eastern District, says “The rise of telephone dispatch transformed both the method and purpose of patrol. Instead of watching to prevent crime, motorized police patrol became a process of merely waiting to respond to crime.”
It is the shift from active policing to passively waiting that has, perhaps, most damaged citizen’s relationship with law enforcement. It has put officers at arms length, out of sight, and out of mind. As a result, citizens see law enforcement as the specter that approaches when bad things happen (or the Big Brother who is watching them through a surveillance camera), not the partner that they interact with to prevent crime in their community. To prevent this Us vs. Them relationship between citizens and law enforcement, a communication shift needs to take place.
Already that shift is taking place through the rise of law enforcement agencies embracing social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, and CrimeReports. Although a neighborhood police officer may not be walking your street, they are slowly becoming more accessible online. These new communication tools give average citizens better access to crime data, information, and two-way communication, but they do not fully replace the advantages of foot patrol officers.
The Future Technology-Assisted, Community-based Law Enforcement Efforts
Just a few days ago, the Baltimore Police Department announced it would be issuing BlackBerries to all of its officers in the coming months, virtually making patrol-car-laptops obsolete overnight. With this new technology, officers have less reason to stay close to their patrol cars and have more freedom to move around on foot easier. Perhaps technology has brought us the next shift in law enforcement: a return to widespread neighborhood foot patrol officers, who leverage personal relationships in the community and online communication tools to prevent crime in their community.
Instead of reinforcing an Us vs. Them mentality through increased surveillance, maybe we should put more actual (instead of virtual) eyes in our neighborhoods to build relationships and foster community empowerment and responsibility through community-based relationships between citizens and law enforcement.
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Law enforcement agencies are increasingly getting more tech savvy, joining Twitter and Facebook in droves, but this trend in law enforcement represents a larger shift in government communication. GovTech reports that there are currently about 2,100 government officials across the country that have joined Twitter, an increase of 10 times in the last eight months. These Twitterers come from all levels and sectors of government and public service. The trend is so large, in fact, that a website GovTwit.com has popped up with a nearly complete listing of all government twitter accounts across the country.
Source: http://www.govtech.com/gt/articles/705992?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=link
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The Washington Post published an interesting article yesterday about the DC Police Department’s decision to hire a PR firm to “brand” the department and “sell” it to the public. Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, said, “There was a time in policing when you were really careful and reluctant to give too much information to the public. That’s really turned on its head . . . . So today the question is: How do you put that information in a form that’s most useful?”
Is this a sign of things to come for police departments? Should your local police department communicate information to the public through a PR firm? Could this be a real benefit to citizens and police? Leave a comment.
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