Tweet of Da Police
Friday, October 15, 2010 at 1:17PM ;)
© Copyright Peter Tarleton and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.I can't claim to be that familiar with the work of KRS-One, but I'm hoping he won't mind me "remixing" the title of Sound of Da Police for this post...
It's not often that I see somone using social media in a way which really makes me sit up and take notice... and I wouldn't have expected the latest example to be the Greater Manchester Police Force.
For those who have sitting under a Twitter rock for the last day or so, Greater Manchester Police (@gmpolice on Twitter) spent yesterday tweeting out details of all of their 999 emergency calls.
The sheer volume meant that had to use four Twitter accounts, but these all used the #gmp24 hashtag so that they were easy to follow.
The experiment generated a huge buzz on Twitter and also in the mainstream media (reports on BBC TV and Radio and in most of the national papers) - presumably at a cost of virtually zero.
I originally thought it sounded like a bit of a gimmick, but the tweets actually made fascinating reading and gave me a level of insight into what the force actually do on a day to day basis which would have been hard to communicate through any other channel.
Unsurpisingly, it showed the totally innappropriate calls made to 999 by some people (including a caller complaining because their benefits hadn't been paid and a report of a man "not walking a dog in a popular dog walking area").
However, it also did a great job of communicating the variety of incidents which the force deal with and the fact that many of these aren't really "crime" in the traditional sense, but more like social work or community support.
I can't help feeling that this is a very canny move by Greater Manchester Police. At a time when we hear continuing complaints about officers spending their time on paperwork rather than policing... and with major cuts to public services in the offing... how better to show the true value of your work?
Can we expect to see a range of "copy cat" experiments in the future? Given the runaway success of this one I'm sure the answer has to be yes... but I don't know whether the public will have quite the same appetite for the inner working of a solicitors' office?
Congratulations to GMP on a great social media initiative. It is really refreshing to see someone thinking this creatively and really using the potential of Twitter.
