180 seconds of fame

When Deputy Chief Constable Neil Rhodes of Lincolnshire
wanted to find out how to change the hard drive in his home computer he thought he’d give YouTube a whirl. To his amazement, there he found a brief video of someone in the United States demonstrating the exact procedure.

“Even if I didn’t know how to grout a tile, I could find a demo
on YouTube to help me through it and it started me thinking how we could adapt that to helping our staff do their jobs more efficiently,” said DCC Rhodes.

The chance encounter on YouTube led to the force’s launch
of its new “PolTube 180” website within the intranet and brief
instructional videos are being added all the time.

“The ‘180’ refers to the maximum number of seconds people
are allowed to explain the process,” explained Neil Rhodes.
“Any longer, and both attention span and sheer time available
to view and learn would be under pressure.”

There’s a series on using the force’s Blackberry devices that
talks through and demonstrates each of the facilities, while other presentations include the chief officers and their roles and CID interviewers explaining ethical TIC and how to conduct prisoner interviews around that issue.

“Every department has been invited to consider what would
be useful and individuals make an appointment with the TV studio to record their piece and it can be up and available on the intranet the same day,” continued Mr Rhodes.

He admits the force is lucky to have in-house production facilities, without which the costs would be prohibitive. “We have led the way for many years in providing national media-related training and video production facilities.

“The income generated has meant that we have been able
to cover the development and running costs and justify the
continued operation of the small television studio and edit facility. It continues to reap major benefits for us,” concluded DCC Rhodes, who is pictured bottom right on the Poltube 180
intranet screen.

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