Police Force Use of Twitter in Cumbria
As the recent Cumbria shootings unfolded, people in the area began to warn others using Twitter from about 10:30 to stay indoors to hide from the killer by using two hashtags: #whitehaven and #cumbria. Not until 13:00 did the Cumbria Police tweet the following: “Urgent public message - Shots fired in Whitehaven” with a link to a web page. This was an opportunity lost. The message did not use the hashtag #whitehaven so it would have easily been missed by a Twitter user following the events using this Twitter convention. The two and a half hour delay in posting online starkly illustrated the gap in comprehension of the opportunity afforded by the real time nature of these networks for their use for both information dissemination and active intelligence and participatory policing by consent.
James E Smith OBE
