Social Media and Modern Policing

Social media is both a challenge and an opportunity for modern policing. It is there to stay and evolve at even faster pace. Police organizations may like it or not but they have to embrace it and deal with it. State of our preparedness will decide whether it remains an insurmountable challenge or morphs into an opportunity.
Concerns:
1. poor existing technology base hampers quality and timeliness of response,
2. It exposes inept handling of affairs and Police organizations haven’t realized that they can’t get away with the behaviours they could in past,
3. It has put undue pressure on jittery leadership to respond even to exaggerated accounts carried by SM.
Recommendations: 1. Embrace change, upgrade technology and bring experts from digital market,
2. Outsource selected areas to SM companies available in Pakistan as done by corporate sector,
3. Police officers to avoid their personal projection on SM and utilise those resources to respond effectively and project organization and its units.