Just when you thought the whole Twitter reach could get any broader something pops up to prove you completely wrong. It seems that celebrities are beginning to turn away from Twitter although if you read any of the gossip and news magazines then you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was still the channel of choice to release information about births, deaths, engagements, weddings, and even criminal convictions. While celebrities may be turning their backs on the micro-blogging site it seems that our police force or just beginning to cotton on.
Presumably feeling a little perturbed about the reported cuts in public spending, Greater Manchester Police have decided to take action by educating the country on how much work they actually do. Apparently, the service receives 2,000 calls a day reporting everything from, going by their first Tweets, men carrying dogs across bridges to actual proper crimes.
There are 3 official GMP Twitter feeds, one to cover each shift, and it’s all been set up in this way so as to avoid Twitter spam penalties.
Peter Fahy, chief constable of the Greater Manchester Police, said that of the 2,000 calls a day that they take, the bulk of these were more what he would call social services rather than crime related calls. Social services calls are those related to things like missing persons so are obviously still serious.
The Manchester Evening News analysed 600 of the Tweets that the police posted and determined that, in fact, only around one third of these were related to non-criminal matters.
Mr Fahy has said that as public spending cuts take hold things will only get worse as government agencies are shut down leaving the police force to carry the can and deal with even more matters that are perhaps less police related than the calls they ought to be dealing with.
