Honest, timely communication with the public is always important, but during a crisis — when people are hungry for information — it is especially critical.
Respond to on-base crises better when you have done thorough preparation and you know your roles and responsibilities along with the roles of the people around you. Use this collection of resources to learn how to navigate and respond to an on-base disturbance with an increased understanding of the following areas:
- Crisis management
- Crisis communication
- Post-crisis reflections
Crisis Management
Before a crisis occurs, establish a crisis management team with designated roles and tasks. Learn and assign team roles, and ensure all team members receive proper training ahead of a disturbance. Doing so will help to mitigate the chances of forgetting essential duties. Refer to your unit's decision matrix to ensure you adopt the appropriate posture, take necessary actions and are aware of possible outcomes if the situation is not addressed.
When a crisis strikes, remember your roles and duties. Understand how the public affairs operations center differs from the crisis action team, emergency operations center and media operations center.
Crisis Communication
During a crisis, it is important to provide a situation report to leaders to help them make informed decisions in the organization's best interest. To quickly connect with senior leadership and the incident commander, you should have quick, easy access to your unit contact list. This list should include current contact information for the base, leaders, internal personnel, spouses and media contacts.
Various forms of communication need to go out during a crisis. As a result, it can be challenging to remember all that needs to be done and all questions that must be answered. Access templates to thoroughly prepare a crisis accident/incident report in the first moments after a crisis occurs. In addition, leverage these resources to learn how to create news conference scripts and media ground rules agreements. Understanding what information can and cannot be released on social media helps to uphold the public's trust. This collection offers resources on social media strategy guidelines and initial post structures for acceptable social media use during a crisis.
Your role also plays a vital part in the investigation process. As a result, part of your communication responsibilities may include sensitive site exploration where you need to know what to capture to create a visual record of the original scene. Designated authorities use this imagery for analysis, investigations and even court evidence.
Post-Crisis Review
After an on-base crisis, learn how to accurately and timely share news releases with the media and respond to media queries. Finally, learn how to document a unit's actions for historical purposes and include key observations and lessons learned in an after action report. Reflection and documentation of what transpired during a crisis helps improve future outcomes.
Use the resources below to compile a comprehensive crisis response kit to help you navigate the challenges of an on-base disturbance involving police. As always, check first to see what your command requires and if there are similar resources available.