Yesterday, an article as published in the New York Times titled “Tweets By Beat From The Seattle Police.” The story focuses on the police department in Seattle Washington, and a new social networking projected they have recently started.
Tweets-by-beat is a Twitter project, in which the department has created 51 automated Twitter feeds, according to police sectors. The tweets provide information on almost every local crime that occurs, excluding certain circumstances in which it could jeopardize the victim of a crime
The tweets are tweeted around an hour after they occur, so that the police department is given a certain amount of time to attend to the crime scene and and investigate.
The overall purpose is to provide citizens who follow the feeds with information about where they live, as well as give them an opportunity to provide valuable information about a crime they otherwise might not have known occurred.
The problem, however, is that the people who do respond with information, tend to respond via twitter, rather than calling the police. Responses to the Tweet by beat accounts are typically not monitored.
I checked out the twitter feeds and they’re pretty entertaining. I think this is something every police department everywhere in the country should start doing. Do I think this helps as a safety measure? No, not really. But the article fails to mention that this is a journalists dream-come-true. Just follow your city’s police department's Twitter account, and you have hundreds of instant free leads, daily. Time for Durham to get on board.
http://seattle.gov/police/tweets/feeds.htm
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