RSS
Email
The Police in Manchester is Fighting Crime Through Facebook
(Rate this article)
Loading ...Email It!
Here’s another one of those innumerable uses of Facebook. TechCrunch UK reports how the greater Manchester Police has just launched a Facebook Application which gives users who add the application crime alerts to individual profiles and newsfeeds.
Such crime alerts work much faster than others especially for users who are on Facebook because average statistics show that Facebook has a high repeat viewership and a greater ‘time spent’ now than most other media vehicles for the youth.
In addition to receiving information, users can also submit items through a ‘Submit Intelligence’ bar on the application. Apart from that the application has tabs for GMP’s website and GMP’s video channel on YouTube.
An interesting concept. Kudos to a Police Force that is now using social media very effectively.
I really hope to see such an application in India soon. It would have to be via Orkut Apps however and they can probably rope in SMS as well by having an SMS alert option coupled with an SMS shortcode that users can send messages to.
In India, tradition and family play a significant role in shaping a child’s personality. It’s shocking to see the kind of approach that Indian parents inculcate towards policemen during a child’s formative years. Consider this – in western countries, a mother / father tells the child “This is Bobby the policeman, our FRIEND”. Zoom in to an Indian environment – have you not heard a mother say “eat your food or the police will come and take you away”. One doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that subliminally, a child’s mind is being conditioned to have a negative attitude towards policemen. Maybe that’s why we’re so cynical towards the cops.
Further, if you have read about Freud you will know that much of what we think and do is related to unconscious processes in the form of pieces of information gathered and slices of life experienced during childhood. We certainly are creating stereotypes for our average cop and many self respecting officers resent this. I’m not saying that a positive stereotype needs to be necessarily created either but we certainly shouldn’t formulate opinions at point blank because then we give selective attention to pieces of information or events, selectively distort that attention we gave and then selectively retain what we wish to. This can be dangerous in the larger context.
Such an Application for the Indian Police will no doubt seek to change the stereotypes that tend to surface. Also given the current situation of crime in our country, its better to be proactive rather than reactive i.e. foster trust and harmony and a combined effort towards fighting crime which is exactly what such an application would do for Police forces in various Indian Cities and states.
Loading ...
Leave a Reply