For the first time, stakeholders from all over Europe engaged in an interactive dialogue exchanging views, experiences and best practices on the present and future of DIY Policing.
Social media empowers citizens to perform activities that fall within the range of police work dealing with public security.
Social media provide today the chance to citizens to contribute as modern Sherlock Holmes in the police work investigating crimes, identifying suspects, forming vigilante groups, hunting paedo-criminals and reporting on crimes.
The goal of the event was to discuss the opportunities and challenges of DIY Policing and its relevance to today’s and future needs of public security as well as its legal and ethical implications.
Many participants recognized the power of social networks and crowdsourcing for improving intelligence and investigations. . Others saw opportunities for “policing the police”: holding the police accountable and thereby eventually improve their legitimacy and quality of services provided to the citizens.
All participants were convinced that online DIY Policing will change the future of policing.
One of the participants said “Kodak was destroyed by Instagram. If police wants to survive DIY Policing they need to transform instead of asking the public to change”.
Reports on the workshop will be compiled by the project’s research team and will be made available on the project’s website. Follow us on Twitter @MEDIA4SEC or join the MEDIA4SEC Community on LinkedIn to stay tuned and join in the ongoing discussions.
Next Medi@4sec workshop with the theme of ‘Riots & Mass Gatherings’ is scheduled to be organized by KEMEA in May 2017.
Photos from the event
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 700281
