Wiltshire Police Road Policing
Oldest police force in the country engages with public across 68 social media accounts including neighbourhood police Facebook pages and HQ twitter accounts
CrowdControlHQ has announced that Wiltshire Police is using the company’s social media risk management and compliance platform to manage 68 active social media accounts, including 24 Neighbourhood Policing Team Facebook pages, several senior management Twitter accounts and community group Facebook pages including ‘Horsewatch’. Wiltshire Police invested in CrowdControlHQ software to address the demand by the public to report crimes using social media.
Wiltshire Police is using CrowdControlHQ to manage content on its social media pages as well as keep a record of the deleted content for reference. A single dashboard enables the communications staff to manage multiple accounts and everyone, given access to the system, is trained to use it and sent an electronic copy of the Force Media Guide. CrowdControlHQ enables on-line chatter, trends and comment to be managed consistently and provides a full audit trail of when people were last logged in and when accounts are inactive.
Helen Kennedy, Head of Media at Wiltshire Police said, “Wiltshire Police has seen how social media has become one of the most effective tools in terms of customer care and how we communicate with the public. Whether this is at a local level through our Neighbourhood Policing Teams or the Chief Constable’s Twitter account – social media has become an integral part of policing and not just corporate communications.
“CrowdControlHQ means that the communications department can maintain an overview and assess the risk, manage the problems and respond where necessary to ensure the public are getting a quality service from Wiltshire Police. It has made monitoring all of our social media accounts simpler and less time consuming.”
The different social media accounts have been divided among the members of the Corporate Communications team, including the Press and Media office, all of whom have access to the CrowdControlHQ platform. Several members of the call centre control room also have access and assist with out of hours monitoring of posts and replies, flagging any issues to the appropriate people.
Wiltshire Police posts videos online to engage the public’s interest and support. Recent videos posted have gone viral, including CCTV coverage of the safe use of a taser on a man trying to rob a convenience store. Using CrowdControlHQ also allows the communications team to monitor the online chatter and moderate the content being posted when social media is particularly active, for example, during a rave event in Swindon.
Helen Kennedy continued, “In recent months we have had continued success in identifying wanted suspects by appealing to the online community to assist. In one instance, the offender was at the police station within thirty minutes of a social media post giving himself up. Although we cannot put a figure on it, this type of use of social networks will certainly contribute to saving thousands of pounds worth of police time and resources.”
James Leavesley, CEO of CrowdControlHQ concluded, “The ease with which social media platforms allow users to share information and communicate has resulted in a steady increase in use by public services organisations. Managing multiple accounts and being able to respond in a consistent and accurate manner is essential for the police and other public bodies. A missed tweet or failure to reply could have severe consequences in terms of events and the resulting potential harm to individuals and/or reputations. CrowdControlHQ provides an easy to use single interface to manage and control all points of contact via social media reliably and securely, reducing risk across an organisation.”
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