@WeCops

                The Twitter home of Continuous Professional Development for Policing

 

                                                                   

 




Briefing Note

 

  1. Introduction

WeCops is a fortnightly run TweetChat on Twitter as a platform to allow the development and sharing of knowledge, ideas, best practice and evidence based research.  This assists in the accumulation and sharing of this between police practitioners and other interested people.  It is a method of promoting informal CPD in UK policing.  WeCops is now into its fifth year of tweeting and has run over 100 chats.  This year WeCops has gone from strength to strength with chats on Covid and policing during #Lockdown1 having a 3 million reach! We believe we are the biggest policing debate forums nationally.

  1. How it works

We Tweet chat every couple of weeks on a Wednesday at 9pm via #WeCops and everybody is welcome to join and add value. 

The @WeCops account is run by several volunteers with a variety of experience from a range of roles and are completely independent from any policing or any other body.

We see our role as providing a professional space to role model discussions between peers to support the exchange of best practice resulting in delivery of excellent policing.   Outside of structured TweetChat times you'll see us engaging and supporting engagement on Twitter with the tweeting policing community, and beyond.  If you've any questions please send us a tweet to @WeCops

  1. How to get involved and what we expect?

Guest hosting a #WeCops chat is a great way for individuals to share the specialist knowledge and expertise that you have with the online community. You don't have to be a in a senior role of have a huge or Twitter following to guest host as everyone adds value!

So if you have a particular field of interest or expertise or you have had a recent experience or read an article that has made you think it would be valuable for us all to talk about then apply to be a guest host.  

As a guest host we do ask for a small amount of your time and commitment to ensure you get the best out of your tweet chat.  Here's a run-down on what we expect from a guest host but don’t panic as we support you all the way: 

  • Write some pre-chat information (about 200 – 300 words) with some links to relevant reading, posing questions and get people thinking prior to the chat (you've seen the way we do this lots in the chat calendar).

 

  • Lead the chat from your twitter account – ask questions, tweet thoughts, ask others opinions and answer any questions they may have. Your chat facilitator from the @WeCops team will be there to back you up, round up any tweeters not using the hashtag and retweet important points. We also take contrary points to keep the discussion going and to challenge thoughts and discussion if needed.

 

  • Write a post chat blog that summarises the chat of about 500 words. This is based on the general themes of the chat and your thoughts and feelings about the chat. We aim to publish the blog as soon as possible after the chat and we may also Plodcast it!

 

  • The Plodcast! A video or audio bite size podcast to summarise the discussion and key points of the chat and topic.  Entire optional but a great way to reach the audience.

We've complied a form to fill in to apply to be a guest host that you can download from (word document) below and email to us.  Or of course just drop us a DM or tweet to @WeCops. 

So if you feel that you are up to the challenge of guest hosting then we look forward to hearing from you.

Apply to be a guest host

 

4.     The @WeCops Team

 Katy Barrow-Grint

 

Katy joined Thames Valley Police in 2000 having studied Sociology at the London School of Economics. She has worked in a variety of role and ranks including uniform patrol, CID, neighbourhood policing, child abuse investigation, surveillance and strategic development. As a Superintendent, Katy has been Head of Criminal Justice for Thames Valley Police and in 2019 took on the role of Head of Serious & Organised Crime for the force. In September 2021 Katy was promoted to Chief Superintendent, Head of Local Policing for Oxfordshire.

 

Katy completed her Masters in Police Leadership and Management at Warwick Business School in 2015. She has a keen academic interest in domestic abuse, and has published an academic journal article on domestic abuse attrition rates with a book chapter and a book due for publication shortly! She has been instrumental in developing Thames Valley Police’s understanding of the academic work being completed by officers and staff, and as a result, instigated the ‘TVP Journal’ which is a fantastic gateway to recognise the academic work of officers and staff. She is also the Editor in Chief of the College of Policing publication ‘Going Equipped’ which aims to share learning and research on policing. She has followed @WeCops for years, including hosting chats previously and was delighted to join the team formally in 2020.

 

Katy tweets as @ktbg1

 

Emma Williams


Emma is the Director of Research and Strategic Partnerships at the Centre for Policing Research and Learning at the Open University. Prior to this Emma was the Director of the Canterbury Centre for Policing Research at Canterbury Christ Church University and she worked in the Metropolitan Police Service for 11 years as a principal researcher. Emma conducted evaluations and reviews on several different policing issues. Emma's areas of interest at rape investigation, police professionalism, police reform, access to justice and community confidence and policing. 

 

Emma tweets as @EmWilliamsOU

  

Caroline Hay

Caroline is a founding member of the Wecops team!  She believes in using this platform to share and debate ideas and spread learning. 

Caroline joined the Metropolitan Police at the age of 20 and mainly worked in repsonse and neighbourhood policing. She is proud of her recent qualifications in Taser and Public Order.  She has recently moved to The City of London Police and is an Inspector in the Force Resoloution Centre.

Caroline has just completed a degree in Policing, obtaining a First Class Honours whilst growing her family.

Caroline is an advocate for Met families and Met babies, Bleepkind and increasing diversity in specialist roles.  She is also a board member for the Strategic Review Board and on the editorial board for Going Equipped

Caroline tweets as @WeCopsCaroline

 

 

Dan Reynolds


Dan is a founding member of the WeCops team with Caroline. 

 Dan has worked as a front line uniformed officer in Cheshire with over a decade of policing experience.  As a Force Incident Manager and Tactical Firearms Commander (TFC) he has a solid understanding of managing threat risk and harm in difficult situations.  He has experience of national project delivery such as Single Online Home (digital services) and has worked with the College of Policing in a variety of roles, offering critical thought and advice.

 

Dan has an appreciation for policing in different environments, having served time on secondment with the Philippine National Police – ask him about this and he will tell you some tall stories!  He is an advocate of using social media to engage people and is a pioneer of the #WeCops CPD platform on Twitter, describing it “a great way for getting people together and putting the challenges facing modern policing into open discussion.”

 

 Dan tweets as @DannoReynolds

 

Chris Excell

Chris is an officer with the Met Police. He currently serves as a Temporary Patrol Sergeant in Lambeth.

He has spent most of his service working Pan-London with London’s Operational Support Unit (TSG). He served on ‘The Group’ during the 2011 Riots and was first responder to the Apollo Theatre collapse (2012). More recently, he was also a first responder to the Westminster Terror Attack (2017).Chris was a ‘Police Now’ Syndicate Lead for Cohorts 1 and 2, responsible for the training and development of trainee officers on the pioneering programme. Chris is heavily involved in voluntary work to support the families and colleagues of officers killed in the course of their duties. He is slowly building a network of officers across the UK who are likeminded and willing to assist with short notice ceremonial duties and pushing the importance of the cause within their home forces.

 

Chris believes very much in looking after and protecting the team. It comes from both a military and sports background. He joins us at WeCops out of a desire to get more people involved in nurturing and improving our profession. Twitter allows us to do just that. 

 Chris tweets as @ConstableXL

 

 

Stephen Rotherham

Stephen is a serving Police Officer for Lancashire Constabulary. His Policing career started in 2014 when he joined Merseyside Police as a Police Community Support Officer, where he worked within a busy neighbourhood for two years before taking the Oath as a constable for Lancashire.

 

Since joining Lancashire Constabulary, Stephen has worked on Response Policing, Criminal Investigations Department and has had secondments to MIT. He is a trained Exhibits Officer and Family Liaison Officer.

Stephen is an openly gay man and has worked on the LGBT Staff Network in both Merseyside Police and Lancashire Constabulary. He is motivated about building bridges between the Police and the communities of the UK.

Stephen tweets as @PCRotherham

 

Kerri Monaghan

Kerri Joined West Mercia Police as a regular officer in 2002 after being a special for 2 years. Before this she gained an honours degree in Biological Sciences (Pharmacology) She worked in a number of roles including CID and Child protection before being promoted to Sergeant with 4 years service. Since then she has worked in custody but mainly on patrol managing a busy area of West Mercia absolutely loving working on the front line. Particularly enjoying helping student officers on their journey to become that safe pair of hands who can be trusted with any job.  

 

Since March just before the pandemic, she has taken on the role of tactical lead for stop and search and use of force for West Mercia. This involves looking at all areas of stop and search and use of force to see what can be improved. Reaching out to other forces and finding out what good practice they have in place. At times this was difficult which is how she found WeCops. One of the newest members of the team Kerri hopes that she can be part of forces being able to learn and share ideas, with each other and others, in an efficient way that will make a real difference to the public.

Kerri tweets as @kerrimonaghan1

 

Some examples of the pre-reads and blogs are here: Pre read example & Blogs 

Check out what is happening on WeCops right now by clicking here:


Coordinators: @WecopsCaroline, @ConstableXL, @EmWilliamsOU, @DannoReynolds, @D_MHayes, @ktbg1, @PCRotherham, @kerrimonaghan1
Next chat details can be found here with archived chats found here .