A police watchdog has highlighted how micro-blogging sites such as Twitter are undermining traditional police tactics by facilitating a new breed of unpredictable and fast changing protests.
HM Inspectorate of Constabulary report that protests can now be organised in hours and changed within minutes thanks to the prevalence of mobile phones, necessitating the deployment of more officers to deal with all eventualities.
The report said: “The character of protest is evolving in terms of the numbers involved, spread across the country, associated sporadic violence, disruption caused, short notice or no-notice events, and swift changes in protest tactics.
“After a few, relatively quiet years, this is a new period of public order policing – one which is faster moving and more unpredictable.”
These fears were realised last November when a failure in police intelligence led to hundreds of student demonstrators breaching police lines and ransacking the London HQ of the Conservative party.
Source: http://www.thedrum.co.uk/news/2011/02/09/18450-police-read-the-riot-act-over-twitter/
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento