What is ‘Social-Enabled Policing’?

Social-Enabled Policing is a concept I introduced in 2013. It is a concept I feel policing and law enforcement agencies should adopt in this age of social networking and crowd-sourcing. Modern day policing started in the 19 century when Sir Robert Peel, United Kingdom’s Home Secretary, created the London Metropolitan Police. A guiding principle adopted by Sir Robert was “the police are the public and the public are the police.” It was about a good relationship and trust between the public and the police, working together to prevent crime and disorder. And, the test of police efficiency should be the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it. That was the beginning of community policing.

While there are many good reported community policing and crime prevention adoption, such as Japan (Koban system) and Singapore, it was more an exception than norm. In the 20 century, community policing seemed to give way to problem-oriented policing, with a focus on rigorous and effective methods to solve problems in crime and disorder, including methodology, tools and data; but not on community relationship let alone on prevention. In the early 21 century, problem-oriented policing evolved into intelligence-led policing. The focus was on integrated crime and criminal analysis, profiling of serious offenders, supported by an informed police command structure. While prevention was an objective, such actionable intelligence was mainly targeting at problems solving, with little focus on the community.

With the advance of analytical tools, intelligence-led policing soon led to today’s predictive policing (PredPol). This is about predicting crime and disorder before they happen, or when they are about to be committed. This allows police to mobilize and deploy the necessary resources to mitigate the threats. While PredPol does support prevention, its main value is in early detection. PredPol relies on past crime and criminal data, and thus assumes that the cause/reason of crime/disorder does not change. Movie such as Minority Report and the sight of neighborhood police officers in military-grade weapons worsen the situation, leading to mistrust between the community and the police. Did we really prevent a crime/disorder or merely suppress its symptom?

Today we are in the age of social networking and crowd-sourcing, breaking down barriers, speeding up information exchange, giving rise to citizen journalism, people/consumer power and evolving human behavior (e.g. selfie, chatting/sharing/liking as opposed to reporting). On the other hand, the bad guys are evolving and getting smarter too. Rumors being mongered at the speed of Internet, herding effects, vigilante, flash mobs/rioting, and looting. Individuals, organized crimes and even terrorists are “crime-sourcing” to help each other though they may not know each other. There are also many cases of criminals bragging about their illicit activities through social media, such as the Roast Busters. Are they plain stupid or openly challenging the authority through their newly found “social power”? Or is it a reality TV? Or even a competition as in gamification?

Even if they are out in the streets, youngsters today tend to be more aware of what’s happening on their smart devices and social networking world than in the physical environments. In the event of an incident, be it traffic accident or major fire, chances are the social generation will snap a photo, if not a selfie, and share it with their friends and connections across the multiple social networking sites they are subscribed to. Calling an emergency number may not be at the top of their mind, if at all. Try Google “air crash selfie”. Likewise the social community is contributing to Big Data by sharing lots of information and media that are of high value to police and law enforcement agencies.

It is precisely because of such behavior that the Boston Police Department (BPD) was able to quickly identify the two terrorists after the marathon bombings on April 15, 2013. BPD has been doing a great job in engaging the Bostonians through social networking before the attack. The “Return on Relationship” (ROR) was clearly visible when they sought help through various sites in a social and friendly manner. BPD received many tips and even photos/videos to help them identify the two terrorists. But the good officers of BPD had to put in days of laborious efforts to analyze such tips and OSINT (open source intelligence). Nonetheless, it was because of this unfortunate incident that I conceived the idea of Social-Enabled Policing, and the need for technologies to empower such concept.

Social-Enabled Policing supports the prevention, detection and solving of crime and disorder. It’s about community policing, intelligence-led policing and predictive policing. It’s made possible through social networking and “crowd-sourcing”, and the effects brought about by them, complementing traditional policing. Mere engagement of the community through physical police presence is insufficient, we need a holistic social strategy and social presence to listen, analyze, understand, engage and communicate with the community. “The police are the public and the public are the police” in both the physical and social networking worlds.

It can be as simple as listening through social sites people expressing their concerns about dark alleys and unhappiness over rowdy neighborhood or frustration about a traffic jam; reporting a crime in progress; posting photos of looters in action; and even criminals bragging about their illicit activities. Social-Enabled Policing is not just about listening, analyzing and understanding the community. It’s also about taking prompt actions, engaging and communicating with the community. Examples include giving crime prevention advice, alerting on disaster, seeking information and assistance, updating police actions, and giving assurance. Strengthen the relationship through social networking and increase the ROR!

A point to note is that Social-Enabled Policing is not just about adoption of social networking technologies and collecting OSINT. It’s still about traditional community policing, intelligence-led policing and predictive policing, complemented by social media and social networking. It facilitates community sentiment analysis and fusion of OSINT with traditional data sources for better analysis, preventing or allowing early detection of crime and disorder. It allows the social-savvy generation to report incident and be engaged through multiple channels including social sites, 24x7. Social-Enabled Policing is also about removal of barriers and stovepipes, facilitating a lifecycle 360-degree view of the victim, witness, suspect and incident.