One of the best ways to prepare for a crisis can be to learn from how others handled the spotlight.
That can be particularly tough when a crisis is based on human tragedy.
The Nicola Bulley case dominated the news.
It held public attention in a way rarely seen in missing person enquiries.
At times, speculation about what had happened was rampant.
But despite the interest that surrounded the case, much of the communication left a lot to be desired.
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I would imagine I led the comms on around 100 missing person appeals during my time as a police communications manager. More people go missing than you might think.
The majority were covered by regional media.
But occasionally, these cases grabbed the attention of the national media. And investigations were protracted.
Like any form of crisis communication, that is something police forces need to prepare for.
And part of that preparation should involve ensuring the investigation leads the narrative.
But that didn’t happen in the case of the mother of two from Lancashire.
Instead, a mix of speculation, gossip, social media sleuths, armchair detectives, and people brought in to assist the search took over.
One of the most interesting parts of the case from a comms perspective was the involvement of Peter Faulding, an underwater search expert.
At times you would have been forgiven for thinking he was the spokesperson for the investigation.
He gave numerous broadcast and print interviews. Sometimes he gave several updates a day.
Was it helpful to police that he said if his team could not locate Nicola in the river, he would not rule out “third party involvement” in her disappearance?
Or that Nicola’s phone left on a nearby park bench could have been a “decoy”?
Here are a few examples of the headlines and storylines his involvement generated.
Forensic search expert convinced Nicola Bulley ‘not in river’ as he names items used as ‘decoy’ Independent
GRIM HUNT Nicola Bulley expert Peter Faulding reveals list of sites where you could park car & bury body without being seen The Sun
Diving expert Peter Faulding appears to blame cops for failing to find body in hunt for Nicola Bulley Daily Mail
In another interview, he shared a conversation Paul Ansell – Nicola’s partner – had about the investigation in which he shared his “frustrations” and complained about a lack of “imagination and willpower.”
Again, hardly a helpful intervention.
And this all added to the circus that sadly surrounded the tragedy.
But this is what happens when organisations in the spotlight and crisis media management mode offer little official to report.
Speculation and gossip fill the vacuum. And in the age of 24-hour news and social media, speculation travels far and wide, especially when the public is heavily-invested in the story.
Such was the level of speculation in this case that police had to issue dispersal orders to remove social media influencers.
And this conjecture and amateur theories appeared to influence what police said, as it moved from a “main working hypothesis” to having more than 500 lines of inquiry.
When Lancashire Police did appear to try to retake some control of the story, it turned into a reputational disaster.
In all the missing person investigations I worked on, I can’t recall ever releasing sensitive personal details beyond someone may have dementia (because it could impact their whereabouts and how they appear) or that they are believed not to have the medication they need with them (because they could become ill very quicky).
The decision on what to release – and what to leave out – is taken by those leading the investigation and the press office. But details, such as dementia and medication, were released at the start because they could help those people be found quicker.
Police deciding, three weeks into this search, to release information about Nicola’s issues with alcohol and the menopause felt like a massive invasion of privacy.
And it was hard to see how releasing the information so long into the search could help find her.
But even then, the messaging was muddled. Initially, police spoke about “a number of specific vulnerabilities” that saw Nicola being classified as a high-risk missing person.
Asked during a press conference what those vulnerabilities were, police said it was “private, personal information”.
Yet, a few hours later, police disclosed she had issues “brought on by her ongoing struggles with the menopause”.
It added: “It is an unusual step for us to take to go into this level of detail about someone’s private life, but we felt it was important to clarify what we meant when we talked about vulnerabilities to avoid any further speculation or misinterpretation.”
Of course, if you talk vaguely about someone’s vulnerabilities, it seems inevitable media will try to piece information together and elaborate on what had been disclosed.
That move caused a furious backlash.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he was “concerned” about the release of this personal information.
Mandu Reid, leader of the Women’s Equality Party, said police had “weaponised” that Nicola was menopausal to “justify” her disappearance.
Elizabeth Carr-Ellis, co-founder of the KnowYourMenopause campaign, said: “They have made her sound like a ‘crazy’ woman.”
Dame Vera Baird, the former victims’ commissioner, said the release of the information “was as sexist as it comes.”
Had a man been missing for several weeks, would police confirm they had turned to alcohol as they struggled with a sensitive issue like erectile dysfunction or a low sperm count?
The backdrop to this tragic case is that confidence and trust in police are crumbling amid scandals and botched investigations. A recent YouGov poll showed that 51 per cent of Londoners don’t trust the Metropolitan Police.
Another YouGov Survey at the end of last year showed that more people are now unconfident than confident in the police to deal with crime in their area.
And the communication around this case is unlikely to positively impact these surveys.
Lancashire Police is now the subject of probes by the College of Policing, the Independent Office for Police Conduct and the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Whatever the outcome of those reviews, public perception is that the investigation was botched.
Trust will not be rebuilt easily.
And that’s a vital crisis communication lesson for all organisations to remember from this tragedy.
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