At Blog Preston, we try and bring you the best of local stories, content and information. Our aim is to serve the people of Preston by raising awareness of initiatives, campaigns and community groups as well as general goings on.
Over the past fortnight, two new nationwide sites have sprung up, MyPolice and RightMovePlaces. The former is an online platform which allows the police and the public to have an open conversation, whereas the latter is a site that pulls in photos and general information about more or less every area in the UK with a property-driven focus. I’ll focus on the latter in a blog post tomorrow.
The reason we’re raising awareness of these two sites is that they both promote ideals that Blog Preston advocates and feels strongly about; communities, openness and increasing knowledge of our area. Both services rely on users uploading their stories, content and ideas to be effective.
MyPolice is in beta mode at the moment. That means that currently it only has full functionality in the Scottish area of South Perthshire where the scheme is currently being piloted, but there’s still plenty of value to be had from this new service before (hopefully) they expand and roll the full experience out to all localities.
You can send feedback to the police, support other people’s stories and questions in the local area as well as rating your experience with the police, meaning that over time it’s possible to gain a good idea of how well the police force is doing, and to identify possible strengths and weaknesses.
Once you’ve signed up with an email and username, you are confronted with the following page. Click on “Submit your story” to start the process.
You are then presented with the option to fill out your basic personal details.
Clicking save then brings you to a screen which enables you to fill out your experience with the police (MyPolice provide an example), suggestions on how it could’ve been better, an option to give the experience a name and to tag the story. For example, if it was regarding a burglary at your home, relevant tags would be “burglary” “home” and “theft”.
Clicking save then brings you to the next screen, which helps you identify where exactly the experience took place. You can either type in the direct address or search on a map.
You can then rate the your experience, whether it was satisfactory or unsatisfactory, whether the staff involved were polite or sympathetic and whether your opinion of the police force has changed since the experience.
Finally you are presented with a page that allows you to review and check any errors you have made, as well as confirming your personal details and whether you would like to remain anonymous or public.
MyPolice is an excellent idea, one that should provide a useful resource for both our readers and the wider population of Preston for accessing information and talking about the police force. If you’ve had any recent experiences with the police, sign up to the site and begin posting. MyPolice also have an exhaustive list of FAQs if you’d like to know more.