One of us cannot be wrong…

Online conjecture following the Boston Marathon bombing was generally unhelpful, is there potential to harness public interest for more useful ends?

Out of all of the steps that the police in the States would have taken in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing, appealing to the online community for help solving the case was not likely to be one of them.

Like many others, I first became aware of the bombings when graphic images of the aftermath began to find their way into my Twitter timeline.

This was ahead of any of the news channels picking up on the story, it was too soon to say what had happened but even at this early stage some users were making unwarranted assumptions about what had happened.

As it does, the true picture began to emerge slowly with the mainstream news needing to verify their sources before reporting. Even with this professional journalistic approach some stories found their way into the headlines that turned out to be misleading.

With images and videos uploaded directly from the scene onto social media, rumour about the significance of certain ‘clues’ encouraged some using message boards and forums to take it on themselves to try and piece together what might have happened.

The sum of the efforts was well represented by the since removed ‘Find Boston Bombers’ forum created on Reddit.

Footage was assembled and with the available ‘clues’, uninformed theories gathered pace to the extent that names of ‘suspects’ were mentioned despite their being nothing to support a suggestion of their involvement.

As The Onion well summed up in its ‘Internet Comes Up With 8.5 Million Leads On Potential Boston Bombing Suspect‘ article, the large amount of time spent online by amateur detectives had been distinctly unhelpful and counter-productive.

In the professional investigation, many different sources of evidence will have contributed to the formulation of theories including forensics, intelligence, human testimony and perhaps most importantly of all, the expertise of the investigators when it comes to managing major incidents.

Not only lacking any real knowledge of investigation, without any supporting context from other sources of evidence as outlined above a few blurry frames from a camera phone could never have been sufficient information on which to base credible theories.

As such though well meaning, most of the theories generated online were ill-informed and in no way helped further the official investigation.

The problem I think was that the public’s interest to help had not been guided, instead it had been discharged unsupervised and at random.

Imagine instead if there was a mechanism through which this eagerness could be harnessed to help rather than hinder the actual investigation, to employ the resources of the many eyes and ears available for a useful end.

Take witness identification as an example and the ‘trace, identify, eliminate’ strategy that we sometimes use to help further investigations. Could people be asked to tag themselves in scene photos so the police are able to contact them as potential witnesses?

As another example, a portal through which witnesses could upload photos and videos from the scene would be hugely beneficial in terms of the evidence gathering process.

With some thought and structure, public ‘crowd-sourcing’ could be a powerful investigative tool and one which in the wake of serious incidents such as the Boston bombings could be very valuable indeed.

There’s potential in the pitfalls of the Boston example, potential that is worth serious consideration.

Where you’ll find me now…

Eight suspects connected with last year’s Walsall EDL protests were arrested this morning, can you help us identify others though?

Police – “Knock knock”
Suspect – “Who’s there?”
Police – “It’s the 5-0, we’ve come to arrest you in connection with the protests in Walsall last September”
Suspect – “I’ll get my coat…”

I wasn’t there but this is likely the sort of conversation that took place at eight addresses this morning with suspects as officers investigating the disorder at last year’s English Defence League (EDL) demonstration in Walsall swooped by for an early morning ‘chat’.

On Saturday 29th September 2012, Walsall Town Centre hosted a demonstration by the EDL and an accompanying counter demonstration, drawing over a thousand participants and necessitating an accompanying police operation with officers available to ensure that the day passed safely.

Whilst the majority of those there on the day caused no issues, there unfortunately was a small group of people who thought that they might ‘start some drama’ attempting to break through police cordons and throwing debris around.

Thirty people were arrested on the day, twenty seven of them ended up being charged with a variety of offences including one found in possession of an offensive weapon and finding himself handed a twenty five week prison sentence.

Since the protest, officers have been busily studying the CCTV footage and identifying further offenders to be arrested in connection with the disorder.

Eight were arrested this morning, officers have released mugshots of another ten people they’re looking to trace and are encouraging anyone with knowledge that may lead to their identification to come forward.

If you know who any of the featured suspects are, please give us a call on 101 or approach Crimestoppers with your tip so that we can pay them an early morning visit too.

All around the world…

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If you were mooching around the interwebs last Friday and happened to stumble upon Twitter in between endless videos of kittens being hilarious, you may have noticed that several of our official police accounts were using the hashtag #poltwt to accompany their tweets.

Arranged by Lauri Stevens at ConnectedCOPS, the #poltwt event was the first ever global ‘tweetathon’ during which police officers and forces from around the world contributed in excess of thirty five thousand tweets over a twenty four hour period to help raise awareness of the work that they do.

You can still read the tweets from the event by following the #poltwt link direct to the stream, you can also see some of the photos that were uploaded as part of the event and even some videos too.

It was great to see that officers from around the world have embraced social media to communicate with the public and I found it very interesting to see what my counterparts in other countries were getting up to during their shifts.

As you can see from the above, there are obvious differences in the sort of kit we use but at the end of the day, we’re all doing the same job and it would appear that our interest in coffee and doughnuts is universal!

As a coincidence, this post on the excellent use of police social media is my two hundredth and only a couple of weeks ago I passed ten thousand tweets on my own Twitter account.

Milestones such as these help emphasise how useful social media has proven to be in helping us inform, update and reassure the public and that officers around the world routinely use the medium as an integral part of their job suggest it is going from strength to strength.

Darkness descends…

I don’t usually repost our witness appeals as the relevant section on the force’s website does the job well enough without me, having noticed though that quite a few people are finding my blog after searching for information on yesterday’s tragic murder of Christina Edkins, a few words here would seem useful.

The best sources of up to date information on the incident remains our website and official Twitter feed, @WMPolice, and so that’s where you need to look first and foremost.

Going from today’s press release, detectives investigating the attack are keen to trace the movements of the suspect before and after the stabbing itself which occurred on the number nine bus on Hagley Road, Birmingham, at around 07:30 yesterday morning.

A male was arrested under suspicion of murder shortly afterwards, he has been described as black, in his early twenties, carrying a white bag and wearing a distinctive ‘tiger print’ jacket as pictured above.

Officers are not looking for anyone else in connection with the stabbing, however the weapon used in the attack is yet to be located and members of the public providing officers with possible sightings may well narrow down the search for this very important piece of evidence.

If you recall seeing a male matching the above description, were on the number nine bus or can provide any other information on the incident then please don’t hesitate to call us on 101.

I still haven’t found what I’m looking for…

I’ve decided to write this post for two reasons. One, I’m a cyclist and don’t much fancy getting knocked off my bike. Two, I like dancing gorillas.

First of all then, point one. The whole not getting mangled by trucks when I’m out showing off my Lycra collection thing.

With almost no exception, cyclists don’t like it when they find that the piece of the road they’re gently cycling upon is suddenly also occupied by someone driving a big metal box at forty miles an hour. It just doesn’t work and usually it’s the cyclist who ends up worse off.

This is why when we’re out pretending to be Bradley Wiggins, we’re cautious around junctions as whilst it may be the case that we have the right of way, we know all too well that if we haven’t been seen, our having had the right of way is irrelevant.

Being alert, wearing something reflective and being lit up like a Christmas tree all help increase the chances that we’ll be seen by those pulling out at junctions who should be following their Highway Code and checking for dangers before pressing down the ‘go’ pedal.

What dangers are you checking for at junctions though? Enter the dancing gorilla.

As reinforced by this recent study from eggheads at Harvard, we tend to look only for what we’re conditioned to look for, meaning we may not see other things that we really ought to have noticed.

The Harvard experiment involved radiologists being asked to examine a CT scan for signs of lung cancer. They were not told there was an image of a dancing gorilla embedded in the scan and as a result, over 80% of them did not notice the misplaced gorilla, even though they had looked directly at it.

This echoes the test conducted in the above video, again where having been asked to look for something in particular, the conditioning means that many people completely miss the ‘extra player’ walking right into their field of vision and dancing a neat little jig.

Transport for London picked up on the experiment for good reason – if you can miss and dancing gorilla simply because you’re not looking for him, could you also miss someone on a bike whilst out motoring?

The answer of course is yes, you could.

The reality of this happening was reinforced recently when a judge warned motorists that they have a ‘responsibility’ towards cyclists following a fatal collision involving a cyclist in Wales.

In this incident, the cyclist had been near the curb, was wearing high visibility clothing and was using lights. He would have been clearly visible to the driver for at least twenty seconds prior to the collision and yet as the prosecution stated, “for reasons unknown, despite the time and distance available to him, the defendant simply failed to observe him”, driving straight into him.

The judge rightly characterised the death as “wholly unnecessary and avoidable”, sentencing the driver to fourteen months in prison.

Now I don’t like dividing cyclists and motorists into opposing camps as I think it’s an unhelpful message, ‘cyclists are at fault here because of X’ and ‘drivers should do Y’ and so on.

Rather the suggestion here is that when we’re using the roads, on whatever form of transport we choose, we always do so with as an open mind as we are able.

P.S. It’s interesting applying selective attention to situations other than motoring, police searches or investigations for instance. If officers are conducting a fraud investigation for example, they’ll be looking for evidence indicating fraud but might they miss evidence pointing towards other offences as a result? I think it’s certainly a possibility.

Idiot, slow down…

Just a quick post this and one I’ve decided to pick up on for two reasons.

Firstly, the video is part of a witness appeal that we’re making to identify the driver of the black Audi.

The collision happened just before 7.30pm on Friday December 7th last year on King William Street, Hillfields, Coventry. A partial registration for the Audi was taken by a witness as ‘EN57′, we’re asking for anyone with knowledge of the vehicle or incident to contact us directly on 101 or anonymously via Crimestoppers to let tell us what they can.

Secondly, even if you can’t help us with the appeal itself, the video is a valuable reminder to other road users that the consequences of letting driving standards slip, even momentarily, can be very sudden and very severe indeed.

That the woman and toddler hit came away with only minor injuries is rightly described as a ‘miracle escape’, it could have been much, much worse.

There’s always another point of view, a better way to do the things we do…

Heroin addiction can be a horrible affliction, a little understanding can go a long way to helping address the issue. (Image from Psychonaught)

It was one of the strangest prisoner interviews I’ve done in a while. Just me and a shoplifter who had already admitted taking spirits from a shop and was now telling me all about why she had done it.

For the interview itself, the confession was what I’d needed.

Yes, she’d taken the goods. No, she hadn’t any reason to think that she could take whiskey and vodka from the shelves without paying for them and yes, had she have got away with it she would have quickly sold the bottles.

Points to prove for a theft covered.

It’s at this point that the interview would usually finish but as I’d asked whether there was anything else she wanted to tell me, it being her interview, she’d propped herself up and opened up about not what she had done but why.

There’s a heroin habit that needs to be fed. A methadone prescription helps to an extent but it doesn’t see her through the whole day. Drinking her prescription in the morning under supervision of a pharmacist, come the afternoon the ‘rattling’ sensation returns leaving her with a gap that she has little choice but to fill by scoring.

The alternative is a crippling sickness as withdrawal symptoms take over, compelling her to find another fix and not letting her think about anything else until she has done so.

This means stealing although as she has suggested, as have many others to me whilst in similar interviews, she doesn’t want to be out running the risk of getting arrested for theft. She doesn’t want the hours spent in police cells, the drugs are the sole reason that she’s here.

The alternative she tells me is prostitution and the sexual abuse at the hands of rough, uncaring punters that inevitably follows. The shops closed, this is sometimes her only option and the sad stories she tells me about life on the streets I know are repeated across the country night on night.

She shows me her arms and the collapsed veins faintly visible under her needle scarred skin. Only the worn look in her eyes offer any real explanation for the premature ageing of her body, the unpleasant realities of having to inject heroin reinforced when she contorts her arm around to demonstrate how she reaches her few remaining useful veins.

The story starts six years prior being handed a drug by a ‘friend’ which she had thought was more innocent than the heroin that it turned out to be.

Addiction quickly took hold and took over, the years that followed were marked by consistent dependence on the drug, largely untroubled by spells in rehab.

It can be very difficult in our job to know what to think about some of the people we come into contact with. Addiction, poverty and unfortunate circumstances push people to do some terrible things. It’s easy to label someone as a ‘junkie’ or a ‘drunk’ and slam the cell door.

From time to time we are presented with timely reminders that the question of why is just as important as what and that there’s always room for understanding, for compassion.

Having listened to the girl’s account and her acknowledgement that people think she’s ‘just another junkie’, it was clear to me that there’s no such thing.

Communications breakdown…

Another excellent bit of twittering from Solihull Police. How are the CPS advising decisions be made when social media is misused though? What would be a realistic approach?

As you may have noticed if you’re a regular reader of these here words, the police use of social media is a subject that is of great interest to me and so one that I periodically return to whenever a relevant story pops up in the news.

I believe the last time I visited the subject was when I resorted to using Cher Lloyd lyrics for a blog in August shortly after Tom Daley suffered some ‘trolling’ on his Twitter account.

Reflecting my own experience using social media as a member of the 5-0, I’d suggested that the police can’t be expected to police people’s usage of social media.

Rather, social media sites themselves have a responsibility for offering tools to block and flag inappropriate content so that misuse is addressed before it gets out of hand and that care needs to be taken ‘offensive’ content be evaluated in its proper context.

This wasn’t to argue that offences can’t be committed using social media, nor that there aren’t occasions when the police might need to intervene, but simply to say that in many cases it’s neither appropriate, practical or necessary to do so.

Today the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, has published interim advice for prosecutors on how they should make decisions on whether suspects ought to be charged in relation to an allegation that they have misused social media. This advice can be summed up as follows:

• Communications that may constitute credible threats of violence, harassment or a breach of a court order ought be ‘prosecuted robustly’
• Communications that don’t meet the above criteria, for example offensive posts, will be subject to a tough ‘Full Code‘ test, this is whether there is a substantial offence and it is in the public interest to prosecute
• For the first part of the test, the threshold for ‘grossly’ offensive content will be that it is more than simply shocking, satirical or unpopular
• For the second part of the test relating to the public interest, it’d unlikely to be right to prosecute if the suspect had swiftly moved to remove the content in question, if they hadn’t intended the content to reach a wider audience or if the content could be seen as ‘tolerable or acceptable in an open and diverse society’

I think this is some very sensible advice which helps address the concerns I’d expressed previously that if social media isn’t properly understood and misuse tackled in a manner appropriate to the medium, the criminal justice system would quickly find itself inundated with cases that shouldn’t really be finding their way to court in the first place.

Taking the above tweet from @SolihullPolice as an example, it was quickly forwarded on by 22,000 other users. That’s 22,000 people who went on to republish the content through their own Twitter accounts, not to mention on other sites and networks.

Imagine now that rather than being a witty update, the same tweet was offensive in tone. Take this tweet from the BNP with the headline ‘Savage Muslim jailed for life‘ as an example.

I like most people find this content absolutely abhorrent, some may approach the police saying as much.

A tough decision then would have to be made as to whether the legal system represents the right tool for addressing the offence caused.

I’m confident that the tweet is indeed offensive but is it ‘grossly’ offensive, particularly considering the publisher and its intended audience? Unfortunately not.

Again, in terms of it being in the public interest to prosecute people for publishing such unpopular sentiments, it’s unlikely that an argument could be made that it is.

Furthermore, were it to be the case that 22,000 people were to forward on the same tweet it obviously wouldn’t be any sort of realistic prospect to be looking at 22,000 separate crime reports with 22,000 offenders to be arrested, interviewed and charged.

An extreme example admittedly but it goes to show how unless there are some tough tests for which cases are appropriate for trial, investigations could quickly spiral out of all sensible proportion.

As impractical as such an occurrence may seem, it was only last month when during the Lord McAlpine scandal, there were suggestions that the police look at investigating over one thousand Twitter users who had wrongly named him as connected to a sex abuse allegation, alongside a further nine thousand who had retweeted the same messages.

I think it’s fair to say that social media and the way it is used is always going to evolve faster than the law can keep up with it. The amount of people using it though and the related potential for issues to arise likely to involve criminal law mean that social media will always have to be kept under review so that the application of the law is appropriate to the medium.

With half a billion tweets being sent daily, the DPP’s advice is a timely reminder that if we don’t try and tailor the law to circumstance then the consequence can be that it is quickly rendered unsuitable for protecting the public it is designed to serve.

For a little more on the application of the law in relation to the Tom Daley case, have a look at this interesting Guardian article from July by Joshua Rozenberg.

Burglary and fireworks, the skies they were alighting…

When I was younger, around this time of the year Michael Burke would usually dedicate an episode of 999 to the dangers of fireworks.

In a frighteningly realistic re-enactment of a real life accident, ‘Johnny’ would bound over to his stunted firework, peer over it and casually get a rocket blasting up his left nostril.

The real life Johnny would reflect on the accident from a studio and then Burke would come along and remind everyone that pretty as fireworks are, they’re also filled with explosives as determined to blow you up as they are to entertain your marshmallow-filled guests.

As it is the case that fireworks are ‘ooooh, aaaahh’ inspiring and potentially dangerous in equal measure, the law imposes certain controls on their sale and use.

Today is November Fifth and so in the best British tradition of not setting of fireworks at any time other than Guido Fawkes Night itself, here is a quick overview of some of the key regulations covering the only explosives you’re likely to come across without falling fowl of the terrorism laws.

First of all, you need to have reached the wise old age of eighteen before you’re legally allowed to purchase any kind of fireworks, including sparklers.

Not only is it illegal for under eighteens to buy fireworks, it’s also against the law for them to have them in public.

Retailers need to hold an appropriate licence and buying fireworks privately from a dodgy bloke in a pub car park is as sure a way to get an arm blown off as wearing a bracelet made of hand grenades.

As for when you can set them off, the curfew set by the Fireworks Regulations 2004 states that you usually need to have your last rocket in the air by 11PM or 23:00, whichever you prefer.

There are certain exceptions to this curfew though, which are as follows -

• November Fifth – the curfew is midnight
• New Year’s Eve – an extra two hours of fireworks fun, a 1AM curfew
• Diwali – this year on November 13th the curfew is 1AM
• Chinese New Year – a 1AM curfew for February 10th 2013

So that covers who can have fireworks and when they can be set off, now how about where you’re allowed to get ballistic?

Moving away from our modern, iPod generation Fireworks Act, we look to S. 80 of 1875′s fluffy side burns, stove-pipe hat wearing Explosives Act which prohibits any person ‘throwing, casting, or firing any fireworks in or into any highway, street, thoroughfare, road or public place’.

For us police types, setting off fireworks in the street is a particular concern as not only being dangerous, it also causes a great deal of bother to residents who’d rather not re-enact the bombardment of Fort McHenry. Hit 9, 9 and 9 again if you see it happening.

Fireworks displays on private land aren’t an issue, although be mindful that you need the landowner’s permission beforehand.

So there we have it, a very quick run down of some of the most explosive laws on the books. Have a safe evening, enjoyable evening!

It’s close to midnight and something evil’s lurking in the dark…

Assuming you’re reading this at any time after half four in the afternoon, it’s probably getting dark outside. You may be reading sat up in the Arctic Circle, in which case it’s probably dark all the time, but either way, let’s say night is a-falling.

Here in West Midlands Police, the end of British Summertime is as big an event for us as the Winter Solstice is to Pagans.

We don’t exactly break out the flaming torches and dance around stone circles but even so, we do out best to prepare our public for the rise in burglaries that can be encouraged by the darker nights.

It’s because of these dark nights that each year we run our cunningly-named ‘Darker Nights’ campaign, with the aim of informing people about the steps that we recommend to help them beat the burglar.

By checking out the Darker Nights section of our own website, you can find all the information you should need to help ensure that your home is as burglar proof as it can be.

The tips offered don’t involve setting complicated, Home Alone style traps – rather they’re simple, easy pointers such as leaving a light on when you go out, all of which make it more likely that the burglar will pass your house by when he (or she) is out on the prowl for easy targets.

The Darker Nights campaign isn’t only about burglaries though, you can also find information about dealing with trick-or-treaters and if you fancy printing off a poster or two advising would be ghouls that you’d rather not have a visit, have a look at our Darker Nights gallery on Flickr.

The good people behind the Darker Nights campaign have summarised their advice in five easy steps to which I have added a handy ‘CRIME’ acronym*.

They are as follows -

• Close your curtains – Don’t advertise your possessions to the burglars, close your curtains and don’t leave laptops, phones etc on open display
• Register your valuables – Keep a list of the serial numbers of all your valuables – take a look at www.immobilise.com where you can register items for free
• Illuminate your house – You know how in Home Alone, Kevin put the cardboard cut out of the basketball player on a model train so it looked like the house was occupied? Maybe that’s going a little far but leave a light on when you’re out so that it’s not obvious your pad is unattended – consider a timer switch too
• Make your house secure – Lock your doors and your windows, no matter how small they are
• Enable your alarm – Got a burglar alarm? Make sure you know how it works and that it’s used, if you don’t have one then consider getting one or at the very least, installing a dummy alarm box somewhere visible

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, for may have seen previous posts about crime prevention and what steps, as a front line officer, I’d recommend you consider taking to avoid becoming a victim.

It’s been a while since some of them were published so if you have a few minutes to spare, please take a butchers at the following crime prevention related posts -

• Part one and part two of my anti-burglary posts from July last year
• From April this year, a post about CCTV cameras
• Going back to July last year again, this post about registering your valuables
• This post about cold callers and why it’s important that you phone us if you’re suspicious
• And from this September, a post about backing up your computer to ensure your files aren’t lost should it be stolen

Finally, with Autumn soon to exchange the ‘seasons baton’ with Winter, temperatures will drop and Jack Frost will begin icing up up everything in sight.

As this is the case, please check out this blog from last Winter about why I’d recommend not leaving your cat unattended to defrost.

Yes, I do mean cat.

* Thanks to the dozens of people on Twitter and Facebook who helped me out with the final letter for the CRIME acronym, you are incredible and can all consider yourselves special deputies!