Communicating through a pandemic: What one police agency has learned so far
Abstract
As the world continues to be gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic, emergency response agencies are faced with the dual roles of protecting their employees while also protecting the public. In order to safely provide service to the community it serves, the Calgary Police Service (CPS) has sought to protect the health of its employees by changing processes, adopting new safety procedures and providing additional equipment. Concurrent with this, it has faced the challenge of how to communicate new, system-wide changes effectively and quickly during a period of unprecedented information overload, social uncertainly and scientific complexity. This paper shares lessons learned from months of using strategic communication to meet operational objectives. It draws on case studies from the incident management team to highlight specific challenges and successes in trying to reach 3,000 employees and the public at large, while trying to keep pace with the constantly changing threat of COVID-19.
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Author's Biography
Katherine Severson leads the Emergency Management Unit within the Major Events Section of the Calgary Police Service. She serves as Police Tactical Operations Center Manager for major policing incidents and has been the police agency representative in the City of Calgary Emergency Operations Center for most major incidents since 2010. She is a member of the Incident Management Team in Canada Taskforce 2’s Disaster Response Team and has served in incident management roles for various events and incidents. Katherine teaches incident management, interoperability in incident command and rescue taskforce response for the four emergency service agencies. Katherine co-hosted the 2016 Calgary Symposium on Mass Casualty Incidents, and has presented at numerous conferences. She is trained in disaster risk reduction and qualified as a Business Continuity professional. She has received the Chief’s Lifesaving Award and the Canadian Police Exemplary Service Medal.
Emma Poole is Team Leader for the Calgary Police Service Public Affairs/Media Relations Unit. She has worked in Ukraine, coaching commanders and frontline officers, as well as new press officers, in the fields of media relations, crisis communication and social media as part of the Canada–Ukraine Police Development Project. Emma is the Co-chair of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police National Strategic Communications Group. She has a degree in applied communications from Mount Royal University’s journalism programme.
Citation
Severson, Katherine and Poole, Emma (2021, March 1). Communicating through a pandemic: What one police agency has learned so far. In the Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning, Volume 14, Issue 3. https://doi.org/10.69554/ZKAX1681.
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