Tayside Police Puts Bobbies On The Tweet

A police force in Tayside will be tweeting on the beat for the next three months, as part of a pilot scheme to encourage officers to communicate with the public on crime prevention.

The trial will run in Auchterarder, Crieff and Kinross in the South Perthshire area, and will see community officers posting updates on police surgeries, crime prevention advice, road and traffic information, campaigns, and other community policing issues.

“Many forces are now realising that traditional methods of getting messages out, which we have relied on in the past, are having less impact and are reaching fewer people,” said deputy chief constable Gordon Scobbie “Simply ‘broadcasting’ messages by whichever channel, is no longer enough. What really makes a difference is giving people the opportunity to engage in a two way conversation with the police about things that matter to them.”

Embracing social media

Tayside Police has experimented with social media in the past. During a recent spate of suicides in the Dundee area, officers used Facebook to engaging with friends of the young people involved.

“We need to embrace this form of communication because if we don’t engage with people via social media they will move on without us and we will miss the opportunity to influence them, making it much more difficult to re-engage with them later,” added Scobbie.

As part of the experiment, Tayside police force is also trialling MyPolice, an online tool that allows residents to give feedback and opinion on policing in their area.

“The Scottish Government recognises that it is vital that communities are empowered to participate in the planning of local strategies, and feel a sense of ownership of what happens within those communities,” said Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill. “Twitter and MyPolice will provide a further opportunity for meaningful conversation and Scottish Government awaits the results of the pilot with interest.”

Smartphones to fight crime

The news comes as research by the University of Portsmouth’s School of Computing reveals that smartphones could be used to revolutionise crime fighting. According to Dr Mohamed Gaber, the combined processing power of mobile phones could enable information to be collected and processed much faster than a centralised computer system.

“Imagine police officers equipped with smart phones that can capture all the sensory information in a crime scene such as fingerprints and digital images – all the data could be analysed locally and the results could be fused together in real-time to give them some insights and knowledge,” he said.

Gaber claims that as few as eight mobile phones being used together can deliver excellent results, due to the combination of the power and the acquired data on each device. The data streaming process does not interfere with the phones’ normal use; the owner just has to agree to allow their phone’s processing power to be used in the background.

Smartphones could also be used to improve mobile healthcare and live business intelligence, according to Gaber. “Such a collaborative process allows for many things. In a neighbourhood, for example, we can share data collected using our smart phones in order to make better decisions about local transport or rubbish collection. In this way being collaborative helps us in taking collective decisions,” he said.

In October 2010, the Greater Manchester Police used Twitter as a live diary of their daily endeavours for 24 hours, in an attempt to prove how essential the police service is. It proved so popular with the officers that new Twitter channels had to be created to cope with demand.

Meanwhile, councils across Britain reportedly saved a total of £230 million in 2009 by using cutting-edge location-based technology to manage and provide services. According to the Local Government Association, innovative location-based technologies and information sharing could potentially save councils up to £372 million by 2014/15.