Tags are keywords. I put tags on every post to help you find the content you want. Tags may be people (Dominic Raab, say), organisations (The Howard League, PRT), themes (women offenders, homelessness) or specific items (heroin, racial disparity, ROTL). If you’re looking to research a particular issue, they can be invaluable.
ottinghamshire Police – @nottspolice – went in a different direction entirely. Their online advent calendar replaces the daily chocolate with the picture of a “most wanted” local criminal. Originally termed the #Badvent Calendar, it was renamed the “Festive Crime Calendar”. It’s still a strong contender for my hashtag of the year award.
On 1 November over 12 thousand tweeters in 68 countries got involved in the 2nd Global Police Tweetathon organised by Lauri Stevens (@lawscomm) over at ConnectedCops. Bright Planet harvested all the data and have produced the interactive infographic below. Have fun hovering over the countries and other sections to get more information.
The 1st global police Tweetathon was a great success. The sequel launches on 1 November 2013 for 24 hours. Get involved and see how police forces from around the world use Twitter to engage with their local communities. #poltwt
Global Police Tweetathon Part 2 takes place 1 November 2013. The first tweetathon took place in March 2013; the hashtag #poltwt trended from New Zealand west to Australia, across Europe and then from the east coast of North America in a wave across to the west coast. There were 48,482 tweets in 23 different languages – reaching over 11 million people. Here’s how to get involved…
Pinterest is the latest social media platform that police services all over the world have started using for a wide range of reasons. To find wanted criminals and missing persons. To locate the owners of stolen property. And much more beyond…
Finally Friday is an occasional series of posts taking a light-hearted look at how social media and law enforcement interact in unintended ways. I’ve posted before about criminals at large taunting police on social media, with varying degrees of success. The case of Wanda Lee Ann Podgurski is a worthy addition to the catologue. Ms Podgurski is a serial fraudster who was convicted in January 2013 of dishonestly acquiring $650,000 from fake insurance and disability claims. Wanda set up a Twitter account and followed just one other tweeter – San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis…
She promptly went on the run.
Did you know that the Spanish national police force Twitter account @policia has over half a million followers? Only the FBI has more. Police display the national Twitter handle on their uniforms and their patrol cars. Spanish Police use Twitter differently from British Police – the focus is not on engaging with individual members of the public but on gathering intelligence – frequently to target drug dealers.
Any major incident provokes a firestorm of reaction on Twitter and other social media outlets. In the wake of events such as the terrorist killing of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich what should the police be doing online. Amongst the general noise and bot-generated confusion, there are opportunities to keep the public reliably informed and gather some key intelligence.
Police Inspector @SimonJGuilfoyle says Twitter proves men can multi-task. One thing I particularly like about twitter is that it affords the previously unheard of opportunity to interact with people at all levels in police forces, as well as those from totally different backgrounds, locations and viewpoints. I’ve had some great debates with a range of extremely interesting people, without the formalities inherent in hierarchies or social constructs.
Social media – and Twitter in particular – is becoming the mainstream way of locating missing people. I was slightly surprised when I reviewed five UK police Facebook pages recently and found that a third of the most popular posts related to missing persons. It’s no surprise that police use social media for this purpose though. I’ve come across two successful outcomes in the last month.
A detailed look at police use of Twitter.
A great infographic from BrightPlanet harvesting information from the recent 1st Global Police Tweetathon which used the #poltwt hashtag.
What do the public like on police Facebook pages? A quick and dirty analysis suggests that success stories, police dogs and information about missing persons are most popular. Any police misdoings also provoke a strong public reaction.
