Sharing media experiences

Lincolnshire Police have been sharing their experience of working with television and social media at an international conference.
Chief Insp Phil Vickers and Supt Shaun West at the conference in Bristol.Chief Insp Phil Vickers and Supt Shaun West at the conference in Bristol.
Chief Insp Phil Vickers and Supt Shaun West at the conference in Bristol.

Chief Inspector Phil Vickers and Supt Shaun West attended a conference in Bristol on Wednesday held by TISPOL - an Organisation has established by traffic police forces in Europe in order to improve road safety and law enforcement on the roads across the continent.

Chief Insp Vckers and Supt West and Shaun spoke to more than 60 senior European police officers about their experience working with Police Interceptors – which included 30 programmes filmed over more than two years – and their wider innovations such as the use of social media.

Chief Insp Vickers said: “We talked about the impact of working with a production company at close quarters for such a long period – advice for other forces who might be in a similar position and what we think would be useful to know.”

They also spoke about the pros and cons of working with such a programme. Mr Vickers said it had been a great way of opening doors and engaging with the community, in particular the ‘target group’ for road safety messages which, he said coincides, with the target audience for Police Interceptors – young drivers.

However, he added there was a time commitment and some negatives came out of a decision to not require officers to appear - with all those who starred in the show volunteering to do so.

He said the reaction was ‘very positive’, adding that it: “Led on to talking about Police use of social media and shows how much we trust officers to put out messages and material on social media – in a way that no other country does.”

He said: “It was important to show the different challenges of policing a large rural county, not just what we do, but why too.”

Lincolnshire’s Police Intercepter series ran for three series and featured about eight stories per programme, meaning about 240 over all.

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