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?

Seeking LE organization willing to work virtually with supervised university students.

The goal is to give students more exposure to real officers and police administrators and fewer TV cops.

Are you willing to partner with a handful of students with retired-LE professor oversight on a small project tailored to your department/team needs? All project ideas considered, prefer those reated to mobile technology, with no anticipated cost to your organization.

I got excited about this even before Carter referred his readers to Cops 2.0, so please head on over, read the rest of his post and let us know if you’re interested. Thanks!

Policing for a future generation

I find Carter’s work — bringing younger citizens into active law enforcement research — especially important because, as 2012 begins, I think we need to take stock of where policing currently sits. In recent months I’ve seen a couple of opinions that indicate community policing, as we knew it in the 1990s, is dead; meanwhile, technology provides police with ever-increasing amounts of data about private citizens. Law enforcement, along with the societies it polices, is clearly in transition as technology and privacy collide at unprecedented rates.

This is not just true of the kinds and amount of data an investigator can glean from social media, surveillance video, license plate readers, and so on. It will also increase as law enforcement becomes comfortable with technology such as:

• Augmented reality
• The internet of things
• Radio frequency identification (RFID)
• Biometrics
• Artificial intelligence

How police use these technologies, the extent to which they use them, and what they do with the data will face intense public and legal scrutiny, as they should. Now’s the time to get comfortable with transparency; if you’re worried about the bad guys finding out how you use technology, then you need to get creative about understanding 1) what the public needs to know and 2) how to communicate it to reduce privacy fears without giving away too many details.

Transparency sits between accountability and exposure

This may be more important than you think. As Scott Dickson wrote the other day, some agencies remain steeped in politics, manipulating their crime statistics by asking officers not to take reports. This, as Scott writes, is a double public relations whammy: not only does it look bad to citizens, who are unlikely to support budget increases for such an unprofessional agency; it also hurts the agency’s ability to see (and thus respond to) emerging problem patterns.

That’s especially worrisome given the balancing act our culture finds itself in as we begin a new decade. This infographic from the Institute for the Future has an interesting item, a “critical balance” of exposure and accountability that notes:

In the face of growing demand for accountability, public exposure will emerge as as a multifaceted strategy for disrupting existing power structures, both hidden and obvious, both criminal and socially beneficial.

There is both danger and opportunity in that balance: danger to certain law enforcement power structures, like the kind that manipulate crime stats. But also opportunity, for innovative investigators to understand and exploit how criminal power structures are being disrupted.

Indeed, Tim Burrows made relevant predictions in his recent post for the IACP Social Media Beat:

• The ‘love-in’ experienced, “just because” the public’s local police are using social media is over and the public will demand (and deserve) greater accountability.
• There will be less tolerance for mistakes, faux pas, and ignorance.
• Working partnerships with individuals of influence, community groups, professional partnerships, and other police agencies will be standard.

As arms of the government, it’s incumbent on police to provide fair leadership to their communities. The law enforcement commander who doesn’t believe he has to justify his agency’s technology use — who believes crime-fighting is justification unto itself — necessarily invites public scrutiny. So does the commander who takes advantage of grant money without a long-term strategy to go with it; both COPS and homeland security programs have seen this happen.

True transparency shows strength, not weakness

This month’s Officer.com column describes using content to serve an agency’s goals, whether related specifically to social media, or more broadly to relationship-building. Besides that column, nearly two years ago (!) I wrote about one example of this kind of activity. There’s a lot of promise for communication. But also a lot of agencies that are so focused on the status quo that they can’t get out of their own way.

Digital content shared through social media can show how police are relevant and important to civil society, as well as weaknesses that need to be shored up. This is the exact opposite of stat manipulation because it’s not trying to cover over weakness; it’s leadership in asking for help to solve the problem.

Yes, the public needs to know a strong police force can competently and adequately enforce laws; but that’s during personal or community crisis. If an agency can’t provide services, in or out of crisis, because it lacks the funds to buy the technology that would enable that provision, then the public deserves to know up front, and deserves to become part of the solution. That was the promise of community policing.

What balances are you striking in your police work?

photo credit: Calm Vistas

Some highlights from this past month:

Newark police headquarters goes high tech

A “mission control” center for disaster response, a high-tech-investigations room that gives city detectives real-time access to federal crime databases — and a meeting room where community groups can meet with police leaders.

The way this story was packaged caught my eye because even with all the ostensibly “Big Brother” style high tech, some emphasis remained for low-tech face to face relationship-building. I’m pretty naive, but I’d like to think this means NPD will use that room to give adequate attention to those who are worried about the way they’re policing. It’s something for other departments to keep in mind as they move further into the realm of high tech.

Three stories on social network analytics

SAS turns social media analytics into intel weapon focuses on sentiment analysis in 28 languages, while Social network analytics saves lives in Iraq is about artificial intelligence. The SAS article is PR-heavy and the InfoWeek article is somewhat oblique (only so much can be discussed without compromising OPSEC), but both are interesting in that they look at technology police may be using in the not too distant future.

Along similar lines was an article about predictive analytics, which prompted me to post on Facebook: “Used the right way, this may be a hybrid between reactive and proactive/community policing. However, data can never replace human relationships, and police shouldn’t overrely on predictive policing.” It’s an argument I made earlier this year in writing about the value of HUMINT and community policing compared to high tech use.

A two-fer on the use of Predator drones

KXAN in Texas covered a convention of UAV enthusiasts, many of whom do help law enforcement on search and rescue missions. Just a day later, though, the LA Times featured law enforcement use of federal agencies’ drones, questioning whether the routine practice is wise. Although courts have ruled that warrantless aerial surveillance is legal — what’s done out in the open cannot be assumed to be legal — drones make surveillance more accessible to police. Once again, it’s officer safety vs. government transparency.

Predictions for law enforcement technology, community service

Finally, I didn’t bookmark this in Scoop.It but it caught my eye nonetheless, because of the predictions it made for the coming year. Most relevant:

• A store will be where the customer says it is.
• Augmented reality and plain old reality will merge.
• Social traction will correlate to brand affinity.

In a law enforcement context:

If stores are going mobile, be prepared for customers to want to interact with police departments this way, too. I’m not talking just getting your text-message Nixle alerts; I mean e-government services like mobile citation payments, real-time crime mapping, crime reporting, etc. Is your website mobile-friendly? Do you have apps for citizens to use?

AR could be huge for law enforcement. The ability to layer information over buildings and faces, for instance, has enormous tactical implications. The only problem is budgetary. But if you’re fortunate enough to live near a university doing research in this area, that can be one good way to jump on the leading edge.

Finally, “social traction and brand affinity” simply mean that more people will pay attention to you online if you’re giving them information they can trust. Not what you think they should trust — but what they can rely on because it educates and is relevant to them. What they need to know, not what you want them to know.

How are you communicating your agency’s use of high tech to the public?

photo credit: jumpinjimmyjava

Regardless of whether your jurisdiction’s policy is to view videotaping as Constitutionally protected free speech, or a danger to officer safety, stated author Jean Reynolds:

Criminal justice experts suggest the following guidelines can go a long way to head off liability problems arising from citizen videotaping:

1. Always identify yourself immediately as a police officer.
2. Speak clearly and courteously, avoiding inflammatory slang and street talk.
3. Use positive words like “cooperate” and “protect” whenever possible.
4. Describe what you’re doing and why.

One problem: memory in high-stress situations is a tricky thing, as the Force Science Research Center has shown. That’s compounded by the fact that online video is as easily edited as it is recorded.

Weeks following the pepper-spraying of UC/Davis student protesters — once the damage had been done to both agency’s and officers’ reputations — an “extended cut” of the incident surfaced. In fact, the officer responsible for pepper spray use, along with his colleagues, had communicated extensively with students before spraying them.

Emphasize strategic as much as tactical messaging

Telling officers to “behave professionally at all times,” regardless of what they’re doing, where they are or whether they’re being videoed, is important… but overemphasizes the tactical aspect of a situation. Department commanders should also consider strategic aspects, including:

Community culture. Watching the full UC/Davis video was almost like watching newsreel from 1968. The protesters were organized, using professional activist tactics to push the situation in the direction they wanted it to go. Police commanders need to be not just aware of activist organizations in their communities, but also in regular contact with them before, during, and following events — acting “as facilitators rather than a force to be confronted.”

The nature of journalism. Traditional journalists have argued that “citizen journalists,” who are not beholden to the same ethical standards, can edit video, text and images with impunity (among other issues). Professional media, however, are not immune; their businesses are suffering, and they’re hungry for saleable stories. So while police and media may have reached a communication standoff in many communities, helping media understand the specific agency’s point of view is key to helping citizens understand.

The messages they themselves are transmitting — intended or unintended – to their communities. After I posted the LE Today article to my Google+ stream, I received this response from a civilian:

The article alludes that there is a “problem” with the video taping of police?… Why is it a “problem” when citizens do it, but its “for protection” when the all-seeing-eye is on a cruiser’s dashboard? If you’re doing your job honorably, and following protocol, in many cases, that tape just became (or should have) “your protection”, no?… These [four items] sound like things [police officers] should ALWAYS be doing (esp. #1 & 2), regardless of any “problem” or “fear” of recording.

In other words, a “do as I say, not as I do” approach will not encourage the kind of relationship-building which most chiefs agree is essential to community policing.

Open government and officer safety need not be at odds

Officer safety is a real concern, but to my knowledge, no one has been able to point to ambushes that happened because attackers had been studying videos of police tactics. Some of the highest profile ambushes have been crimes of opportunity: four officers killed in a coffee shop, several shot as they sat in their idling cruisers, an officer killed during a traffic stop.

Governments at all levels pay lip service to embracing transparency without understanding what it entails, which is usually a path full of thorns involving personal privacy, sometimes ugly truths, and the hard work needed to fix problems (often despite tight budgets). However, many Americans, both left and right, express fear that we are sliding towards — or living in — a police state. Officer safety is as much a function of public trust as it is tactical prudence. Law enforcement agencies that champion transparency, starting with public scrutiny for their officers’ actions, will go a long way towards assuaging that fear.

photo credit: Cleaner Croydon

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

To start with, PPD actually did use Twitter to get its message out to Occupiers. More than that, though, was the way PPD commanders engaged in careful planning, including:

• Reciting the First Amendment at each roll call.
• Restricting officers from carrying pepper spray or Tasers, and assuming sole authority for the decision to use force.
• Reminding officers to be ready for citizens to film them.

These measures were notable enough, but what also stood out to me was the way communications planning took into account the way protesters themselves were communicating:

During the trip to Center City, Karima Zedan, the department’s director of strategic communications, monitored the chatter on social media of a building police presence at City Hall. Zedan and Ramsey discussed whether they should send the occupiers a message through the department’s Twitter feed, which they knew the protesters monitored.

“What we should say is just what our goal is, and that’s to safely remove people so construction can begin,” the commissioner said.

As Ramsey’s Car 1 arrived at City Hall about 1 a.m., Zedan sent the tweet.

Indeed, PPD’s Twitter feed from that day was filled with tweets about, and to, Occupy:

It was not all that dissimilar to an October 10-11 effort in Boston, where police moved protesters from an unapproved encampment near an original, agreed-upon site:

Boston Police communicated to protestors the request to vacate the 2nd encampment and return to the original site numerous times throughout the evening via Twitter, flyers and in person [as well as its blog]. The required police action resulted in the arrest of 141 individuals who were charged with Unlawful Assembly or Trespassing.

The agency’s Twitter feed, while more repetitive than Philadelphia’s, similarly used hashtags and other community-oriented language and tone:

For BPD, which has been on the forefront of social media use (including a personal approach rarely seen in law enforcement tweets), this style of communication was not unexpected… although I believe it could’ve been less defensive. See the difference between BPD’s messaging tone, and PPD’s?

Defensive, derisive or merely dismissive: How tone affects your message

Again, simply using Twitter to communicate with Occupy protesters is not the point. While I do, as I said in my last post, wish police were using their feeds more proactively, the fact that communication is being built into encampment removal plans at all is important.

The New York Times’ graphic of the evolution of riot gear shows that communication with protesters was poor and inflexible in 1968, but had given way to negotiation and flexibility by 1995. Although communication is, unfortunately, not mentioned by name in 2011, indirect forms of communication are: managed protests via the permit process, along with “regular use of intimidation.”

It’s these indirect forms of communication that can affect a blog post or Twitter feed, too. In contrast to Boston and Philadelphia police tweets, @RichmondPolice’s appeared to want to downplay any mentions of Occupy by limiting their tweets — even as police bulldozed encampments on Halloween. (Three of those tweets were directed to people who had addressed them first; several of those, directed to the same person.) No Occupy hashtags were used, and the tone (“We’re sorry you have an issue…”) borders on dismissive.

These kinds of nonverbal communication speaks volumes about police officials’ collective approach to people in a certain situation. Look at the way officials in each of these three cities spoke about protesters:

“These people are not criminals,” said Chief Inspector Joe Sullivan, who oversaw the operation. “They are not our enemies.” (Philadelphia)

“We continue to encourage the leadership of Occupy Boston to maintain an open dialogue with authorities in the spirit of coordination and cooperation.” (Boston) (To be fair, less than two months later, Police Commissioner Ed Davis was quoted as saying, “[There are] drugs, vandalism and assaultive behavior. [$723,000 in police overtime is] a significant amount of money…. [which] would be much better spent in neighborhoods where there is firearm violence.”)

Meanwhile, a brief Google search revealed that Richmond police had little to say beyond the fact that nine arrests took place. Again, it would appear that they were trying to downplay the protests in their city.

The work of relationship building

Some believe that police are not there to understand or to communicate with Occupy protesters; rather, their job is to investigate crime and remove encampments when ordered to do so. Indeed, PoliceOne.com reports that police went undercover at Occupy Los Angeles, collecting intelligence on any potential threats to law enforcement.

Even at that, according to the L.A. Times: “From the outset, department officials had struck a collaborative, friendly stance with protesters, and believed they knew what to expect from them [when police stormed the park]…. ” That work paid off; the LAPD was widely praised for its restraint in removing the encampment.

It’s notable, as the Times further reports, that police invited clergy and legal observers to witness police-community interactions. That is not the mark of a police state, nor are agencies that seek to understand the mistakes of others in order to avoid them.

What Philadelphia’s effort showed was that, if police want to avoid reinforcing this belief, any communication plan should not just include logistics — who will communicate, via what channels, how often, etc. — but also careful assessment of:

• What emotions they may inadvertently convey. Even something as short as a tweet can read sarcastic or condescending. Professional police shouldn’t allow this to happen, but are still human, still experience frustration and irritation. Make sure your bloggers, Twitter users and videographers understand how miscommunication can hurt relationship-building efforts, especially in sensitive parts of your community.
• Whether the right people are communicating. Most law enforcement agencies would rather maintain control over their messages by restricting the number of people who can send them, but think about officers who know particular communities or issues better than any other. Consider having them contribute to, if not outright create, content on behalf of your agency.
• How much information you can reasonably transmit, taking into account ongoing operations. Law enforcement agencies are no different from other organizations in their desire to avoid liability. However, a tight communication policy won’t protect your agency from a lawsuit if there are deep systemic problems, and citizens value information — the more of it they have, the more comfortable they feel. So consider sharing what you can about what you do, even if this requires a sustained effort with long-term planning.

Occupy protesters may be, compared to other areas of a community with deeper and longer-standing problems, a nuisance to be dealt with before moving on. But they remain members of the community, and they’ll remember how police approached them — via Twitter, in person, on a picket line or even as part of their group. Whether their memories are positive or negative will drive how they interact with police in the future to solve public safety problems. And so, even when police stick to their core mission, the tone in which they communicate their efforts remains critical to their success.

How has online or in-person tone shaped your interactions with people in your community?

photo credit: breyeschow

“What keeps police chiefs up at night is that somehow the purpose of the movement will become about actions that the police have taken,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a D.C.-based law enforcement think tank.

That’s exactly what is happening. Because of police actions, some OWS supporters view law enforcement as part of the bought-and-paid-for corporate machine; and some Tea Partiers, though they may support actions taken against OWS, have perceived police as part of Big Government.

At this point, the more “outside” police try to be, the more they will fan the flames of misperception on both sides. This is perhaps exemplified in a recent Alternet post (emphasis mine):

PERF organizes conference calls among police officials to discuss areas of common concern. Last year, it held a conference call among police chiefs who were worried that Arizona’s harsh immigration law, SB 1070, would drive a wedge between law enforcement agencies and the immigrant communities they are supposed to protect and serve. Fox “News” ran a story at the time alleging that PERF was some sort of far-left police organization and therefore illegitimate. Now we’re getting a similar story from progressives, which is discouraging.

Shaping the story you’re part of

For three years Cops 2.0 and resources like it have existed to help police learn how to use social media (and other forms of technology) to build relationships with the public. Yet we see little evidence of any such relationships — online or off — in any of the cities where violence, or even nonviolence, has taken place.

What if police used social tools to shape the story they’re already a part of? Not their side — a cop’s-eye perspective on arrests taking place — but the story itself. Consider this largely positive version of PERF and OWS policing from the Las Vegas Sun (emphasis mine):

From Atlanta to Washington, D.C., officials talked about how authorities could make camps safe for protesters and the community. Officials also learned about the kinds of problems they could expect from cities with larger and more established protest encampments….

and:

Interim [Oakland, Calif.] Police Chief Howard Jordan said… a theme was how the atmosphere at the camps had shifted from a haven for peaceful protest to one for criminal behavior.

“Some chiefs had been tolerant of the progressive movement, but that all changed when the criminal element showed up,” Jordan said. “As police, you can’t allow anything that foster criminal activities in any city.”

Jordan said that he and other police brass and city officials began planning last week for officers to remove the camp outside City Hall for a second time after collecting enough evidence that gang activity and an open-air drug market had emerged at the park.

and most telling of all:

Portland (Ore.) Mayor Sam Adams said the primary issue among the mayors was how to get a message to a movement that didn’t have any clear leadership. “A lot of time was spent on how do you effectively communicate with a group that doesn’t have a leader?” Adams said.

Monitoring, influence, and “joining the conversation”

I am quite sure that police are monitoring online conversations for insight and, yes, intelligence about what’s going on in the encampments. But Adams’ question indicates fundamental misunderstanding about the power of social media monitoring in helping an organization learn how — and with whom — to communicate.

Setting up a Facebook page and a Twitter account (or a blog, YouTube channel or podcast) only prepares the agency to keep broadcasting using new channels. In other words, engaging with fans and followers about the content you push is merely a discussion about business as usual.

If police really wanted to use social media to “join the conversation,” they’d join the conversation — the one that matters to the citizens. Not to be political, but to involve protesters in finding the best balance between free speech and the laws that make for civil society.

And, secondarily, to use all that online intelligence to educate themselves about the group. In fact, many movements online are lateral and leaderless — yet nevertheless benefit from informal leaders, or “influencers,” whose opinions and thoughts resonate with many.

So in much the same way that physically blending into the OWS crowds would allow police officers to see informal leaders and group dynamics, learning who’s blogging, tweeting and shooting video (and what they’re writing or shooting about) would help police determine critical online influencers.

And what would they do with that information? For starters, they might solicit those individuals’ help, both online and off. The “criminal element” dilutes OWS’ message too, and while protesters wouldn’t want to be treated as “informers,” they should at least be given the opportunity — as any Neighborhood Watch — to have a hand in protecting one another.

This is the story police should be telling about their role. Chiefs coming together is a start, but making communities safe needs to involve the communities themselves.

Incidentally, these are ideas reflected by former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper in an interview with Democracy Now (emphasis mine):

“…if the police and the community in a democratic society are really working hard—and it is hard work—to forge authentic partnerships rather than this unilateral, paramilitary response to these demonstrations, that the relationship itself serves as a shock absorber. ”

Expanding further in his own article for The Nation, Stamper advocates:

Assuming the necessity of radical structural reform, how do we proceed? By building a progressive police organization, created by rank-and-file officers, “civilian” employees and community representatives. Such an effort would include plans to flatten hierarchies; create a true citizen review board with investigative and subpoena powers; and ensure community participation in all operations, including policy-making, program development, priority-setting and crisis management. In short, cops and citizens would forge an authentic partnership in policing the city. And because partners do not act unilaterally, they would be compelled to keep each other informed, and to build trust and mutual respect—qualities sorely missing from the current equation.

In the business world, marketing strategists talk about the need for “social business,” an organization into which social media are integrated at every possible level — channels that facilitate communication, which in turn promotes the kind of structure Stamper envisions. (It’s worth noting that these are dynamics already appearing among the civilian protesters at OWS.)

A police force whose actions reinforce the worst perceptions is an ineffectual police force, at a time when our society needs leadership more than ever. Leadership isn’t telling people to go shop, or go home, or go get a bath and a job. It’s understanding why people are using demonstration to show they care about their society, and from there, understanding — and talking about — how to work together to keep the peace.

How can you shape the kind of story that develops into dialogue about how you police your community?

photo credit: jorenerene

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

How maps help juries visualize cell phone data

In May, Law Enforcement Technology published an article, “Mapping Human Behavior,” which used a high-profile California homicide case to show the pivotal role which cell phone evidence played.

Wireless expert Jim Cook, quoted in the article, will be presenting at the HTCIA International Training Conference & Expo in September. To promote his lecture via their blog*, I interviewed him for more information.

We ended up in a long discussion that wouldn’t fit there, but that I thought would fit quite well here, about things first responders and investigators both need to know about cell phone evidence — but rarely do.

Why cell data mapping?

Cook says in some cases, the cell phone can be one of the primary pieces of evidence. It usually contains content and metadata (information about content, such as a date/time stamp or geotag on an image or video).

In other cases, the data on the phone may be deleted. While cell phone forensics can recover this kind of data, it may not recover everything (depending on the tool used and the examiner’s skill level). Even if it does, carrier data can be an important corroboration of what the phone tells the investigator.

A carrier’s call detail records are a “fingerprint” of the device’s activity, which may include calls, texts, and data transmissions placed or received. The records include information about the cell sites and sectors from which this activity originated; sometimes, if requested soon enough, location information and text content can be obtained from the carrier.

“Sometimes you don’t have the weapon, or witnesses, but you do have potential suspects,” Cook explains. “The victim’s or suspects’ cell phones and carrier data together can contain critical evidence including a suspect’s movements, possible witnesses or even more suspects.”

Otherwise, with no clues, investigators may want to consider requesting a “tower dump.” The tower dump is a request which the investigator makes of the carrier to provide all call, text, and data transmissions that connect to the cell sites covering the crime’s geographic area for a specified time period.

Cell carriers are encouraged to “co-locate,” or lease space on the tower(s) they own, to other carriers wishing coverage in an area that they don’t currently cover. That means that a single tower can contain records for multiple carriers’ customers — which can run into the hundreds or even thousands, depending on the time period and the location.

“A tower dump is a ‘needle in a haystack’ piece of evidence,” Cook says, “but it can be especially useful with serial crimes such as home invasions, robberies or sexual assaults, because tower dumps for each crime location can be cross-referenced for numbers that come up in all locations.” In a case he assisted with, this type of evidence was backed up with search warrants to specific carriers, which led to the arrests of 11 suspects.

But so much evidence can be overwhelming in its raw format. Once the tower dump leads to a specific suspect via a specific carrier, as in the case example above, those call detail records can be mapped as a way to help non-technical people visualize a suspect’s or victim’s movements.

Visualizing a cell sector as a "piece of pie."

“You first explain to the jury how the phone actually works,” says Cook. “You explain antennas, sectors [he uses the analogy of a piece of pie] and so on — then the call process, and how the carrier captures the data.

“Then you show them the map and how you plotted the data, and ultimately, what it means to the case — how it solidifies or even potentially refutes other evidence, including eyewitness accounts, video or social networking updates.” He estimates the conviction rate on cases he has assisted with is 96-97 percent. “Cellular phones are really the new DNA,” he adds, paraphrasing Santa Clara County Deputy DA Vicki Gemetti.

So how do investigators do the mapping?

1. Book cell phones as evidence; don’t mark them as personal property.

“Personal property, if picked up by the suspect or a designee, can be wiped of any and all content,” says Cook. “Booking the phone as evidence allows you to write a search warrant to examine the phone, and also obtain call detail records, text and data transmissions from the carrier for the time period in question, which should be done ASAP because it’s volatile. Not every carrier holds it for a year — some expunge call records after just 90 days.”

Currently, MetroPCS is the only carrier that maintains text message content for up to 60 days. Other carriers such as AT&T and Sprint don’t maintain content at all, while some (like Verizon) maintain it for very short periods of time — six to eight days.

Call detail records can substantiate witness, suspect, or victim testimony, and can even solve a case. At that level, waiting too long can be fatal to a case.

2. Be sure to get data from the phone, too.

Don’t overrely on the carrier, even if you haven’t waited too long. “There is always more evidence,” says Cook. “Take the extra step or two you need to find what you can find from the device.

“Don’t think you can’t get data if the phone’s battery isn’t charged, or if you don’t have cell phone forensic tools. I’ve bought chargers for police from wireless retailers,” he adds. “And if you don’t have a forensic tool, or the tool you have doesn’t work on that phone, or you have only one tool, find an agency that has a tool that will work or a different tool from the one you use. There is always more data; to recover the maximum amount of data from the device, use more than one tool.”

3. Write warrants for carrier data from at least the past three months.

Cook raised this point in the LET article, what he calls “the Jim Cook Rule #1”: go far beyond the immediate period of time you’re interested in.

“We’re all creatures of habit,” he says. “We’re up in the morning, on the road by a certain time, driving through Starbucks and calling mom or dad on our way to work. We have similar routines on the way home and on the weekends.

“But then, we take our phone to New York, and there’s this big gap of no activity when normally, we’re talking to people. Only an extended sample of call detail records can show whether this is out of the ordinary, or part of a subject’s monthly routine.”

4. In your warrant, use the right verbiage.

Also discussed in the article — a sidebar goes into the specific eight items that Cook recommends — is the need to get the right amount of detail in the search warrant. “Carriers need exact requirements for certain information,” says Cook, “like cell sites and sectors, along with the phone data. If they don’t provide it up front, investigators will end up having to write multiple warrants.” That can waste precious time, and lose data along the way.

5. Make sure you’re getting the right data from the carrier.

If the defense attorney is doing his or her job, you may need to prove that the phone really belonged to the suspect at the time of the incident. “Number portability and number switching mean that the investigator needs to find out if the device was active and billable in the suspect device’s carrier’s network during the specified date range,” says Cook.

“If not, you have to find out where to serve the paper sooner rather than later, while the data is still there, instead of finding out you were wrong two or three months later when the records are gone.” Services like FoneFinder or Neustar will show carriers of record; however, they aren’t always 100% accurate, and investigators should follow up their findings with a phone call to those carriers.

6. Be specific with tower dump requests.

If you have to take that next step into the haystack, provide carriers with a physical location, longitude, latitude of crime scene or other location of interest; then, request a tower dump of all calls, text events and data transmissions from all cell sites and sectors covering that geographic area during a period of time. “Let the carrier’s engineers determine the best sites and sectors, as opposed to an investigator making an incorrect assumption that will only result in the wrong data being obtained,” says Cook.

Questions about cell phone investigations or mapping, or want to get in touch with Jim Cook directly? Let us know in the comments!

*Disclosure: HTCIA is a client, but I was not compensated for this post.

People see that little of us these days, other than in a quick fleeting visit or by passing them whilst preoccupied whilst on foot – or more likely – by car. When they do see us we are generally busy thinking about what we have to do and that we have X amount of outstanding jobs that are “backing up” and need dealing with and that we have a pot of crimes that need investigating between all the calls for service….

All of this has resulted in people forming opinions of us. We are arrogant, unapproachable and uninterested [being some of the most popular ones]. In turn, we have formed opinions that the public don’t like us and that we are unappreciated and not understood. It’s a vicious circle.

We cannot control what opinions people form, but we can try to influence the reasons why they think them.

If only we had more opportunities like those I had this week. I think all of us would benefit from it. But I didn’t get a “tick” for doing it, and it’s not measurable by some kind of statistic.

Then, police leaders’ point of view on where policing is headed, from a summit in Seattle:

“The fact is, we’re in the process of constructing the next iteration of police work,” [Chief Garry McCarthy of the Newark Police Department] said. “Initially, police were very reactive,” responding to crimes after they’d been committed, he said.

“Then proactive policing came in, and we talked about preventing crime. The next step is preventing crime in concert and with the blessings of the community,” McCarthy said. “It’s where we’re going as a profession.”

[King County Sheriff Sue Rahr] said police agencies are good at teaching officers physical skills, but now they need to focus on officers’ interpersonal skills.

Instead of focusing on building trust through community forums and other macro-level efforts, Rahr said the focus is shifting to the micro level by building trust through individual contacts.

“We need to build community trust one interaction at a time,” she said.

What austerity means to community

Both in the United Kingdom and in the United States, what is called “austerity measures” in the UK and “budget cuts” in the US has impacted policing severely. Just this past week, the Sacramento Police department was the latest to announce deep cuts, layoffs too. Many specialized units are being eliminated, and officers will respond primarily to emergencies.

Yet both Good Old Bill and Sheriff Rahr are calling for more one-to-one interactions as a way to stave off the psychological impact of these measures. What’s up with that?

I’ve worried about what cuts would mean to high tech crime investigation and digital forensics. The more entrenched technology becomes, the more need to examine it for evidence of crime. Yet as police departments pull staff from these tasks and reassign them to the street (or lay them off altogether), the return to a more physical form of policing means less opportunity for officers to practice their digital — along with their interpersonal — skills.

The answer may just lie in those one-to-one interactions. Last year, a Denver Post article detailed how residents of Colorado Springs (Colo.) were taking a more active role in their own quality of life maintenance, the issues behind the “Broken Windows” theory of policing.

This reflects an article from San Diego, in which police noted that community policing was never meant to be permanent; it was meant to be transitory, enabling the community to be proactive and rely less on police. This transition may be underway already, even if we weren’t expecting it.

Legal and social complications

Still, questions remain on legal and social issues, especially with regard to high tech crime and evidence. Two other stories are troubling because of what they mean for privacy and how civilians relate to one another.

In Michigan, the ACLU has for a long time demanded to know how state troopers use cell phone forensic tools. Other law enforcement agencies are starting to put these tools in cruisers for officers to use, to save time and enable more evidence collection with less manpower.

However, and not just because of the ACLU, forensic professionals hesitate to cheer such decisions because good case law is predicated on proper forensic process. With great power comes great responsibility, after all; is it enough simply to train the officers on the use of the tool? A forensic unit is not a radar unit; it takes more than tuning forks to validate that the tool works properly.

In addition, The Independent noted that in the UK, victims of theft have engaged in some degree of vigilantism to find the high-tech equipment they’ve found stolen:

From Surrey to San Francisco, software is doing the job of the police as vigilantes use tracking programmes more commonly seen in CIA action thrillers to locate missing computers and phones. In April, the ex-England rugby captain Will Carling traced his stolen iPad to a block of flats in Woking. He knocked on all the doors – to no avail – then traced its movement through the town while detailing the chase on Twitter. The iPad was eventually handed in to local police.

Certainly this is convenient, but in some cases it may violate state laws. In California, for instance, no “safe harbor” law exists for crime victims to monitor stolen equipment in real time. That means residents who use these tools may be violating anti-wiretapping laws, and laws designed to protect private communications — yes, even on stolen equipment.

In other words, police can’t use that evidence in court, or at least can use only the data not collected in real time, and may be barred from using the information even with a search warrant.

More recently, vigilantism reared its head in Vancouver following the riots over the city’s Stanley Cup loss:

[B.C. Civil Liberties Association David] Eby said he understood the community’s anger, given the destruction and chaos, but said that bloggers run the risk of labelling bystanders as criminals.

“The concern that we have is when pictures are posted to private websites, the suggestion is made that people may have broken the law,” he said. “There were many people in the downtown area that were shocked, stunned, appalled that were not breaking any laws.”

It seems clear to me that in order to help citizens navigate these issues, police cannot simply return to the “bread and butter” of traditional policing. If they do, then that leaves only federal law enforcement — the Secret Service, the Internet Crimes Complaint Center, etc. — which is also unsustainable over the long term.

If we:

• don’t want to return to traditional reactive policing because it will undo all the hard work we’ve put in over 20 years
• don’t have time or resources to devote to proactive policing over the next 20 years
• are truly taking the next step towards empowering citizens to keep themselves safe

Then we should consider treating them almost as rookie cops, finding field training officers and attorneys who can help them navigate legal and social issues as they become proper partners in public safety. It goes without saying that social media could help pave the way.

I know of detectives and officers who already do this, making the time with their agencies’ blessing. How might yours make room among their regular duties?

Image: lancmanoffice via Flickr