Forces Need To Be Better Prepared For Social Media-Fuelled Disorder

29 May 2025

Police forces need to “get ahead of the game” to prevent mass disorder, by engaging with communities and quelling false narratives on social media, the Chair of Cleveland Police Federation has said.

Earlier this month, Sir Andy Cooke, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, published the second part of his report into the policing response to the summer 2024 riots. He said that "in the face of extensive violence, officers displayed immense bravery”, but that forces "need to be better prepared to manage the risks online content poses".

Sir Andy concluded that police forces must prioritise intelligence on disorder. He said that the police service had not kept pace with the fast-developing nature of online communications, and that forces needed to do more to counter false narratives online.

Cleveland Police Federation Chair Paul Crowley agreed with this assessment, and said that police forces were under-prepared for 2024’s riots; he added that they had not learned lessons from the mass disorder in the summer of 2011.

He said: “This report rings true for me. The majority of my career has been involved with public order policing, be it the widespread disorder that we saw in 2011, or more recently last summer, along with policing royal visits, football matches and things like that.

“Last summer’s disorder was perpetuated by a false narrative that was being peddled on social media. The same thing happened back in 2011 – although social media wasn’t as prevalent, a narrative was being spread through an encrypted messaging service. That was fuelling the fire and it was something that the police were struggling to get a grip of.

“We should have learned back in 2011 that a cyber element was a key factor in perpetuating that disorder. In my opinion, we were under-prepared in the summer.

“I think we need to take that learning forward and, should we experience anything of a similar nature, we need to start engaging more with communities, we need to start communicating more with social media postings, and quelling those myths and untruths.

“We need to get ahead of the game, quite simply. Policing can become reactive, and we need to be more proactive. Proactivity doesn’t just mean uniforms on the streets. It can mean people in offices and other venues, be it covert or overt, assessing the risks that are posed by social media and working collaboratively with uniformed officers to bring our communities back to a level of safety.”