Staffordshire Chief Constable Mike Cunningham has been in the local papers this last week, talking about the potential cuts the force faces and his position in relation to it. Mike is an interesting guy and his comments in relation to shared services echo those from colleagues around the country. In an Express and Star article he forecasts the financial realities driving the sharing of human resources, IT and financial management as well as closer links between specialist branches of forces such as firearms units, road policing and communications.

If greater collaboration in these areas of business is the underlying direction, then last weeks Raol Moat case in Northumbria has thrown the whole issue into sharp focus and most surely will prompt both political interest and political scrutiny. At the very least, once the lessons are learnt and digested, the incident provides a springboard for the regionalisation of specialist services, including firearms capability, debate.

The utilisation of so many different force firearms teams must have placed considerable challenges on Northumbria Police, so hats off to them and the great job that they, and colleagues from other forces, did. However, now that the incident has concluded, the really interesting part will be the lessons and learning gathered from the series of debriefs that will undoubtedly be taking place.
I have no doubt that there will be close scrutiny of everything from strategy and command and control, through interoperability of equipment and tactics, to variations in finance and staff allowances. In all of this, largely internally focused, structural debate (critical though it is for service wide learning, particularly if Mike Cunningham is right in his forecasts), I hope that equal scrutiny is directed toward the management of public perceptions and the impact of the operation on the wider police ‘brand’.
Effective analysis of the enormous broadcast and social media coverage given to the incident (and here I’m talking mainstream news, video sharing websites, wikki’s, blogs, discussion forums, facebook and micro media such as Twitter) will show what people’s concerns were (and maybe still are), how the force (forces) addressed them and where effective intervention points were used (or missed). Decent analysis will show you which of  the multitude of channels (blogs, micromedia, print, tv etc) carried the most influence, not just made the most noise. Clippings alone won’t provide the answers, there needs to be systematic analysis that provides deep, actionable, insight.
(Disclosure. I work with 6consulting.co.uk and the Radian6 ‘strategic listening’ platform which does exactly this (and does it with a number of forces)).
Your brand is created and weighed and judged in the mind of the person interacting with it. You try and nurture, promote and position it, but the end user decides it’s worth. Critical to this decision making is the image of your brand.
Throughout the Moat incident, watching the various news reports, I was struck by the variety of uniforms and equipment seen and the confusion that brought to the police brand. Officers didn’t quite look the same, slightly different protective helmets, placing of force badges and clothing. It wasn’t particularly overt, but just enough to show differences and slightly confuse. One of the barriers to firearms team regionalisation will be the issue of harmonisation and standardisation of uniform and equipment. When that matter is debated, I hope that the brand and image implications are considered alongside the practical functionality issues.
The Moat press conferences have been the subject of a lot of post incident comment.  My issue is a broader one and applies to the majority of police press conferences that I see.
The object in doing a press conference is normally to provide and elicit information and/or cause someone to do, or not to do, something.  If you want someone to do something, like provide information, then make it easy for them!   Provide a backdrop that gives a contact number, a web site, an email address, something. Check it out from every possible camera angle. Mid shot, wide angle, tight: can the contact details be read in every shot? Yet experience shows most forces still erect a large version of their force badge (most of which is out of camera shot anyway) and leave people to work out how to contact the right place and the right people themselves. The result: Senior Officer/SIO etc sitting against a plain blue background with part of an (unidentifiable) force logo somewhere near them.
I know that you’re proud of your force badge, but think about press conferences from the viewers perspective and make it easy for them to respond to you.

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