Unbidden, autumnal thoughts enter my head. I really ought to get a new, smarter, fleece this year. I should take a look at the timer settings on the heating. Better start to think about getting the garden sorted out as well. Aren’t the mornings just a little nippier lately? Definitely Autumn on the way.

Except it isn’t. Unknowingly and unwittingly I’ve responded to the work of the Horse Chestnut Leaf Miner Moth. Uncritically, and without conscious thought, I’ve responded to a visual stimulus in my immediate environment and drawn entirely the wrong conclusion. The leaves are brown, therefore Autumn is on the way.

I even introduced other environmental clues to confirm and support the hypothesis driven by my unconscious thoughts. The mornings getting nippier? Not so. The reality is that the temperature yesterday was a lovely 70 degrees and the sun was shining brightly.

The Horse Chestnut Leaf Miner is a moth that attacks the Horse Chestnut tree and turns the leaves brown. It only attacks the Horse Chestnut Tree and, now that I look at my environment more critically, I can see that all the other trees are still a beautiful green and in full foliage.

The thing is, I didn’t look at my environment critically and neither do most of us. We go about our business and respond, often unconsciously, to the visual stimuli around us.

Which, in a round about manner, brings me to the point of this post. What are the performance, cultural and organisational visual stimuli where you work ? What effect, conscious and unconscious, are they having on you and your colleagues? Have you walked around your part of the business with your eyes wide open (and your critical senses engaged) lately?

Are there images, words and visual signposts relating to the culture that you’re working to support and deliver, or things that subtly detract from your efforts?

Is the current performance agenda reinforced or is it undermined by evidence of previous exhortations and initiatives?

Staff are focused on financial cuts, operational cutbacks and the probability of job losses. Times are going to get harder. Does your business environment support and reinforce the doom and gloom. Are things looking tired and dog eared, messy noticeboards, scruffy parade rooms, unwashed cars? Subliminal message: things are bad around here. It’s all out of control. Or, are things smart and cared for, clean, tidy, ordered. Subliminal message: We are focussed, delivering a great service and professional.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s worth ten minutes of your time to take a walk around and check out the level of Horse Chestnut Leaf Miner infestation in your working environment. Maybe your people are thinking that it’s Autumn without realising why.

Me? I’m off to enjoy the countryside. It’s still Summer!

NB

For those of you who are remotely interested, the Horse Chestnut Leaf Miner infestation was first observed in Macedonia in the late 1970’s and has spread through most of Europe and into western Russia, Ukriane, Belarus, Moldova and Albania. It was discovered in England in 2002 in Wimbledon. Since then it’s spread has been rapid and it now covers south-central England, East Anglia and the Midlands and is spreading rapidly West and North.

Interesting to see how America is approaching it. This CBS News post highlights a few of the apps that have been developed already, but also tugs at the mom and apple pie heartstrings with a patriotic video appeal from various stars of the tech world for developers to get behind ‘Code for America’. Nicely done video though.

Policing minister Nick Herbert will be undertaking a live online Q&A at 11.00 BST on Monday 2 August on the Number10 website to answer your questions on the Government’s plans to change the face of policing over the next five years. Earlier this week, the Government launched the consultation Policing in the 21st Century: Reconnecting Police and the People, which contains proposals for ways to make police in England and Wales more available and responsive, more accountable, more effective, and better value for money (allegedly).

You will be able to submit questions during the Q&A directly into the discussion or via twitter (see. told you should be on Twitter! – find me at twitter.com/openeyecomms)

They will be using the CoveritLive platform, which I have previously seen used very effectively by a Neighbourhood Inspector in Cumbria (in conjunction with the local newspaper). Worth joining the chat just to check out the possible use of the platform as a means of encouraging local involvement and engagement.

I’m grateful to Sussex Police’s Robin Smith (twitter.com/ChSuptSmith), who ran his own live online ‘Virtual Town Hall’ session last year, for bringing this to my attention.

Essentially, I use three key channels to reach my police and public sector audience.

The blog, for those longer pieces that require a view or a bit more thought. This is emailed to those people, like you, who subscribe.

The ‘interesting things’ section of the www.openeyecommunications.com website. This is regularly updated with things that catch my eye, but that I don’t want to write a longer blog piece about. This is not emailed out. It’s regularly updated, but you have to visit the site to see the items (go and bookmark the page now!).

Twitter, for those shorter, more immediate items, that I think will add value to the people who ‘follow’ me and want to stay in touch with what’s happening in policing and the public sector.

Increasingly I am also using twitter to replace texting. As more and more friends and colleagues sign up to twitter, it’s becoming easier to direct message them on twitter than to email or text. This allows me to arrange meetups, offer advice and stay in touch easily and for free!

If you had been following me on twitter (twitter.com/openeyecomms) you would have seen these (and many more) items over the last week:

Is Regulation A19 set to become the most used bit of legislation in UK policing? http://ht.ly/2gbMZ #police

How to interact with your community. Great work by #police“@psniards: 57 off the 3,000 facebook followers mark.

Humberside #Police defend a ‘don’t report a crime under £20 immediately, keep a diary’ scheme for shopkeepers http://ht.ly/2fCvp

It’s unlawful for Female Genital Mutilation to be done anywhere in the world on UK permanent residents, any age (14yrs imp) Prosecutions = 0

Female circumcision will be inflicted on up to 2,000 British schoolgirls during the summer holidays http://ht.ly/2gbHG

The most violent place to #police in the UK? Strathclyde. 3,800 cops assaulted there last year (more than th Met or PSNI) http://ht.ly/2gbDV

Restorative justice could lead to ‘rehabilitation revolution’. Criminals could cut jail sentences by saying ‘sorry’ http://ht.ly/2grUt

RT @TheIndyNews: Police bail man who leaked VIP protection costs http://bit.ly/9iUAHX

RT @Police_Oracle: #Police South-East Police Authorities Round On HMIC: Chairs issue joint statement http://bit.ly/dnFHfF

Is ‘restorative justice’ moving up the criminal justice agenda. Sure looks like it http://j.mp/c9YJPT #police

Check out what the US Department of Defense is doing with its ‘social media hub’. Should UK #police do similar? Oh, yes! http://ht.ly/2fMfU

Scottish #Police in turmoil as Supts Assoc criticises Chief Officers over approach to budget cuts http://ht.ly/2eUHL

If you’re not on twitter yet, go do it. It’s really easy to get started.

If you can’t open the links in this email, you can do so on my website or by going to twitter.com/openeyecomms

Looking forward to tweeting you soon! (Please pass this on to a friend)

Justice Minister Crispin Blunt, speaking at NACRO, gave his first public speech this week on the direction and reform of the criminal justice system.

In the speech he called for more restorative justice and recompense for victims; improved rehabilitation of offenders; smarter sentencing; more decision- making at local level; increased voluntary sector involvement and more effective community sentences.

Detailed plans in the speech include:

• reviewing sentencing policy and providing more effective community sentences, such as more robust community payback
• introducing a Green Paper in the autumn which will reassess the effectiveness of indeterminate sentences (IPPs), bearing in mind the growing IPP prison population
• exploring the use of more restorative justice across every phase of the criminal justice process
• allowing for deductions from prisoners’ earnings in properly paid work to contribute towards victims’ services
• empowering local agencies (including criminal justice, health and Jobcentre Plus) to work together in tackling social issues faced by many offenders
• devolving funding and decision-making to local groups with more emphasis on voluntary and third-sector led services
• opening up competition in penal services and paying providers by results and,
• providing support for skills development in prisons.

Looks pretty much like RJ is moving swiftly up the agenda (That’s gotta make Sir Charles happy!).

So. Well done once again to the TV Probation Trust. Everyone else. Time to take a good look at how you are using RJ and whether it currently has a clear place on your partnership agenda?

Apparently ‘Structural Reform Plans are the key tool of the Coalition Government for making departments accountable for the implementation of the reforms set out in the Coalition Agreement. They replace the old, top-down systems of targets and central micromanagement’. There, now you know.

The five priorities for the Home Office are:

1. Enable the police and local communities to tackle crime and anti-social behaviour
Enable police forces and local communities to deal better with the anti-social behaviour and crime that blights people’s lives

2. Increase the accountability of the police to citizens
Make police forces more accountable to the communities they serve through oversight by a directly elected individual and transparency about what the police are doing locally to tackle crime

3. Secure our borders and control immigration
Limit non-European Economic Area migration, establish a Border Police Force to secure our borders and end the detention of children for immigration purposes

4. Protect people’s freedoms and civil liberties
Reverse state intrusion into the lives of law-abiding citizens by scrapping ID cards, bringing common sense into the employment vetting process and restoring rights of non-violent protest

5. Protect our citizens from terrorism
Support cross-government work on Counter Terrorism, prevent the spread of extremism and confront extremist groups

However, and it’s a massive however, all of this is subject to the outcome of the Comprehensive Spending Review process due to be completed by the Autumn. Reality: no money = no can do all these things.

However, looking on the bright side, the structural plan does outline the hoped for timescales for all this stuff. So, in the spirit of being helpful, I thought that I would try and put a little time line together for you. So, here goes…

By end of:

July 2010

Undertake a review of Olympic Security preparations

Aug 2010

Review current measures for the detention of children for immigration purposes

Sept 2010

Develop and consult on proposals to consolidate anti-social behaviour tools and powers to reduce complexity and provide effective interventions for police, local authorities and social landlords

Consult and develop proposals to overhaul the Licensing Act 2003 to strengthen local authority and police powers to remove licenses from, or refuse to grant licenses to, any premises that are causing problems

Consult and develop proposals to replace Police Authorities with directly elected individuals, who will be subject to strict checks and balances through locally elected representatives

Autumn 2010

Develop plans to deny public funds to any group that has recently espoused or incited violence or hatred and proscribe such organisations, subject to the advice of the police and security and intelligence agencies

October 2010

Develop options to pare back the police inspection and targets regime, especially targets and data requests imposed on the police by the Home Office

Introduction of temporary ban on legal highs

Consider changes to security and counter-terrorism policies and systems as part of the Strategic Defence and Security Review under the direction of the National Security Council

November 2010

Develop options to ban below-cost sale of alcohol, working with other government departments

Trial police powers for charging minor offences, before launching a national roll out

Develop plans to extend the collaboration between police forces to deliver efficiencies by sharing certain functions between forces in the same area

Remove Stop and Account recording and reduce Stop and Search procedures

Support the Ministry of Justice in developing a rehabilitation Green Paper, including options for sentencing reform

Review counter-terrorism legislation, including Control Orders, and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA)
Publish proposals for the storage of internet and e-mail records, including introducing legislation if necessary

Develop proposals on how best to extend the UK’s ability to deport foreign nationals who threaten our national security

December 2010

Develop proposals with the police to strengthen arrangements to deal with serious crime and other crimes that cut across police force areas

Develop options and a strategy for drugs misuse, covering prevention, enforcement, treatment and reintegration (including rehabilitation), working with other government departments

Support the police in publishing local crime data every month in an open and standardised format, so that the public can get proper information about crime in their neighbourhoods and hold the police to account for their performance
Support the police in holding regular police ‘beat meetings’, supported by monthly crime data, so that residents can hold them to account

Develop changes to the criminal records and vetting and barring initiatives

January 2011

Full review of the remuneration and conditions of service for police officers and staff, alongside the Spending Review

First areas publish local crime data in an open and standardised format
Beat meetings take place using local crime data

Review of the ‘prevent’ strand of the counter-terrorism strategy with a clear separation between ‘prevent’ (Home Office lead) and ‘integration’ (Communities and Local Government lead)

Revise the ‘CONTEST’ counter-terrorism strategy

March 2011

Strengthen the UK’s protection against and ability to respond to a terrorist attack, including enhancing the nation’s resilience

April 2011

Ensure hospitals share non-confidential information with the police on knife and gun crime and other serious violence, working with the Department of Health
Improve the recording of hate crime by setting up systems to provide a consolidated set of data of hate-related offences, published in an open and standardised format

Draft a cross-government strategy to prevent violence against women

August 2011

Make changes to pre-flight checks to identify people who pose a potential terrorist threat and prevent those who pose a severe terrorist threat from flying into and out of the UK

November 2011

Introduce new system of temporary bans on new legal highs while health issues are considered by independent experts

Legislate through the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Outlaw finger-printing of children at school without parental permission, working with the Department for Education
Further regulate CCTV, including Automatic Number Plate Recognition, to ensure that its use is proportionate and retains public confidence
Adopt protections of the Scottish model for the DNA database and publish guidance on the application of rights to remove DNA from the database
Restore rights to non-violent protest, in particular by reviewing the current legislation governing protests around Parliament and making necessary changes

(FYI – In the main I have excluded the asylum and immigration issues from this list)

Hope the list is helpful to you. I’m off for a stiff drink…

Ben’s premise is that just as people are trained as first aiders (First Aid courses apparently started in Woolwich, hence the title), so they could be trained as community responders to tackle anti social behaviour.

The rationale is that in these difficult financial times, and against a philosophy of ‘co-production’ of outcomes,  a community oriented, skills based, training programme which addresses effective ASB interventions, is designed by professional experts, is simple, so that almost anyone can master it, is aimed at adults and which appeals to civic or humanitarian motives, has merit.

Ben argues that three core skills should be taught:
Basic skills in self-protection and restraint ( It is important to know what physical steps to take to minimise the risk to oneself or others when confronted with a violent or potentially violent situation, including knowing how to position oneself to affect an escape, and how to defend oneself or others if attacked).

How to ‘read’ a situation, to appraise when it is appropriate to walk on by, when it is safe and appropriate to intervene, or when the police are
called for.

Training in conflict resolution: skills for mediation and restoration. People who take a community safety course should leave knowing how to defuse an argument, forge an agreement, and, where appropriate, elicit an apology.

Have a read and see what you make of the concept. The reality is that, as budgets and workforces shrink and expectations continue to rise, policing agencies ARE going to require greater public involvement in delivering effective outcomes. This may not be the complete solution, but it’s certainly worth a read.

The full essay/report can be found in the Agency Reports section of this site here

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.

The majority of my readers get their Open Eye Communications updates via email. However, only the longer blog posts in the ‘blog’ section of the website are emailled to you.

I regularly update the ‘interesting things’ section with shorter items and…well, interesting things, that catch my eye. To read these you need to visit the website (I have just posted an item about the shocking number of ex service personnel that are being arrested and entering the criminal justice system) and click on the ‘interesting things’ tab.

A quick plea here. Whilst you’re on the site I’d be really grateful if you could click on the odd advert. It doesn’t actually cost you anything, but the click throughs make me money and help subsidise the cost of running and maintaining the website (and to put it bluntly I’m several clicks short of the full clack). Thanks. Appreciate it.

Mike

Foursquare has just added a ‘layers’ feature to it’s basic operating premise ( just to recap in case you missed it, Foursquare is a ‘game’ that uses your phone’s location to allow you to ‘check in’ to various locations in your area. The greater the number of check ins, the greater status you achieve and the more badges you get (think boy scout patches!). Smart companies and organisations are seeing the benefit of this and are offering perks, the more check ins, the greater the number and the value of the perks. Check out this article from the Brighton Evening Argus newspaper about how local businesses are using it.

I have blogged before about how I think that police forces and police authorities could use Foursquare to stimulate engagement, provide information and develop service shaping mechanisms.

Foursquare have just upped their game and made all of this, potentially, even easier. They have added a ‘layers’ feature. What this means is that organisations can create layers in an area that people opt in to.

Two partners, the Independent Film Channel (IFC) and the Huffington Post, announced the release of Foursquare location layers this week. If you follow IFC or the Huffington Post you’ll be given notifications when you use Foursquare to check in to any location near one of their favorites. Follow the IFC, and you could be told when you’re near a famous film location or a theater. Follow the Huffington Post  and you could be told when you’re near a protest or some other real time news event.

The possibilities of Foursquare layering are immense for policing.

Imagine a layer that told people when they were near an incident or crime that you were seeking witnesses for, that showed them where their Neighbourhood Policing Team were located, that told them about great work done by volunteers near them and encouraged them to ‘check in’ and get involved, that warned them of the dangers of driving dangerous vehicles and encouraged them to ‘check in’ to an approved garage for a safety check, that warned of the dangers of a particular crime in an area and allowed them to ‘check in’ with the crime prevention officer for personal safety or property security advice.

How about rewarding people for checking in to a location, maybe a neighbourhood team surgery, and providing feedback on the service they’ve received, or rewarding people for checking in and suggesting ways in which the service could be made better. The rewards could be tailored to appropriate  segmentations. Want to know what kids think of the way that they access your website, or the way that mums feel about your front office systems, procedures and facilities? Create a range of ‘rewards’ appropriate to the demographic.

In my view, the possibilities are endless and are probably only limited by our imaginations.