UK Police Force Posts All Its Calls On Twitter 66
Stoobalou writes "One of the largest police forces in the UK is posting every incident reported to it today on Twitter. Greater Manchester Police began its 24-hour experiment this morning at 05:00 BST, tweeting all incident reports in the hope of highlighting the complexity of modern policing. 'Policing is often seen in very simple terms, with cops chasing robbers and locking them up,' Chief Constable Peter Fahy said in a statement. 'However the reality is that this accounts for only part of the work they have to deal with.'"
First problem report of the day (Score:4, Funny)
"Local authority's twitter account has been hacked"
Re:First problem report of the day (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds like (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sounds like (Score:4, Insightful)
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Order an airstrike on the police station, wait for the twitter feed to go quiet? ;)
So (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, this is two staff from the PR department doing the tweeting, not front-line police officers. Given the publicity they've received in return for those two person-days of effort, it seems like pretty good value to me.
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Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
I would hope that they are.
The 999 system data would not be sufficiently anonymized and be too long for twitter's character limit. I would also prefer to know there's at least some separation between the E999 networks, and the general internet.
Rather than risking an automated filter, and since this is a single-day thing, it makes more sense to bruteforce it. If it was going to be a permanent fixture then I could see the value in going whole-hog and automating it.
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Why does a police force need a PR department?
-molo
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They have private police funding in the UK?
-molo
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Why does any organisation need a PR department?
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To answer questions from the press. PR isn't just sitting around thinking of ways to spin everything in a positive light. The police have a responsibility to accurately report to the public the crime that is going on in the community.
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That's what police reports are for.
-molo
Re:So (Score:4, Insightful)
The UK government are planning to significantly reduce public spending. The police receive criticism for being very expensive even though there's a lot of crime.
Posting routine activities on Twitter demonstrates the range of tasks the police have to do, which makes it easier to justify the cost of policing, increases public understanding of the role of the police (thus making it easier for the police to work with the public) and may also help reduce the number of false emergency calls received (which do have a very real cost and distract from the genuine emergencies).
For a couple of days effort it's a reasonable idea - shame they've cocked it up.
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Why does a police force need a PR department?
-molo
You know very well that government budgets are, in part, controlled by public opinion. There's a reason police pose for the press when they make a bust/solve a crime. Stop being a douche.
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There are a lot of reasons.
In my city,when there are crimes in some parts of town, the police organize community responses where civilians help police canvas the area and talk to possible witnesses. In some minority (especially latino areas) a lot of people are VERY wary of speaking to the police, but they are more willing to talk to an average civilian. These are organized by police PR.
Another thing that's really nice in my city is that there are a number of mailing lists--my ~150 home neighborhood home ow
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Oh, yeah, totally! WTF is up with blowing taxpayer money by multi-tasking and educating the public about their mission and seeing what the police see!?
Re:So (Score:4, Interesting)
# call 1069 bag of sand obstructing traffic in Oldham #gmp24
1) steal a bag of sand
2) obstruct traffic with said bag
3) ???
4) profit!
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call 1407 information request about Twitter day
someone needs to call in for an information request about call 1407 and why is an info request a "call".
post the call number, repeat, recurse.
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Jesus, you have *no* idea what you're talking about.
First of all, only a small portion of the force is on at any given time. It's not like there are 10k cops walking around all the time, they need to sleep occasionally and take days off. And the ones that are on duty but not going to a call are patrolling, not watching TV.
Second of all, if somebody wants to report it, they have to come and take the report. That's how it works - they don't just seek out posts.
Third of all, while somebody complaining about a
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Fourth of all, why are the *police* part of this "whining women" bunch? Support that statement
Because they are stunt-posting these calls to twitter. If they gave a damn about the goals for a police force - not just doing their jobs as they define them - they would make all this information easily accessible all of the time. But, since that sort of disclosure would likely hold them to higher public accountability, they are only doing it for a single day.
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Because they are stunt-posting these calls to twitter. If they gave a damn about the goals for a police force - not just doing their jobs as they define them - they would make all this information easily accessible all of the time. But, since that sort of disclosure would likely hold them to higher public accountability, they are only doing it for a single day.
If I had a choice between their 'workforce' patrolling the streets and dealing with crime or making 'all that information' publicly available, I'm voting for them to spend my tax dollars dealing with crime rather than publicly displaying the daily grid of shit they deal with. To bastardize an old saying, police work is like making sausage and passing laws, someone needs to keep an eye on it to make sure it's not going astray but I sure don't want to see how it all works.
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If I had a choice
False dichotomy.
To bastardize an old saying, police work is like making sausage and passing laws, someone needs to keep an eye on it to make sure it's not going astray but I sure don't want to see how it all works.
Naive recipe for abuse.
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First of all, only a small portion of the force is on at any given time.
Yes, roughly 1/3. It's called a shift. But then again the calls aren't all happening at once, either. Some officers do become free to deal with new calls after an hour or so.
Third of all, while somebody complaining about a Facebook post seems a little silly, it could easily be a serious death threat from a crazy ex, or something.
Yes, it could be. Or it could be a terror plot aimed at destroyin
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Only if they're working 7 days a week. If they take holidays and a few days sick leave then roughly 1 in 6 are available at any given time. They also have to deal with things like giving evidence in court.
In fact, of that 10000, only about 1100 will be publicly available. And that's assuming they're all front line full time st
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Yes, roughly 1/3. It's called a shift
You work 1/3rd of all the hours in a year ? 8 hours a day 365 days a year, no days off, never a day of vacation, nor a single day of sickness or other absence, ever ?
In the real world, people who work fulltime work perhaps 1/5th of the time, not a third.
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Actually I work much more than that, but I'm self employed.
Re:So (Score:5, Insightful)
Because every single one of those 10,000 people is dedicated to answering the phone.
According to the paper you linked, they only have 7000 officers to cover 500 square miles. The entire point of this exercise is to highlight the sheer volume of work they have to deal with and how much of their time is wasted on bullshit calls.
Quite frankly I wish MORE police agencies would do similar. This should be public information to begin with, and it helps create awareness of what these people go through on a daily basis. The transparency is nice. It takes all of 20 seconds for the person taking the call to type it out.
=Smidge=
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No, I'm assuming the more sensible people who complain about it anyway might gain some modicum of understanding.
And it's possible that some people might make hoax calls... but if you'll notice the tweets don't give any real detail so it's not clear how successful such a hoax would be, plus it's already illegal to knowingly make false reports so the joke will be on the caller when they end up being arrested. Good plan.
=Smidge=
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for five minutes, until the joke wears thin
... per person who thinks it would be funny... which could be >20,000 people
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only have 7000 officers to cover 500 square miles
I seriously hope that either they're covering a larger area than this, or you screwed up on these numbers.
7000 officers / 500 miles = 14 cops per square mile
Lets split that into 3 on duty shifts and assume that 25% are off duty at any one time (10% would be more likely, but I'll err on the side of caution).
This still leaves 3.5 cops on duty for every square mile.
Even when you account for detectives, administration, maintenance teams, and dispatch, that's still absolutely insane.
This is espec
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The City of London police covers 1.1 square miles with 813 police officers. That's one policeman for every 10 residents, interestingly, though obviously number of residents in the city is a fairly meaningless number.
The NYPD covers 468.9 with 35,284 police officers, or 75 per square mile.
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Policeman per unit population is a more sensible measure than per square mile anyway. Land doesn't commit crimes.
The UK is much more densely populated than the USA, don't forget.
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There is some awareness going on. For example, the Avon and Somerset Constabulary website [police.uk] has 'inappropriate' 999 calls.
Check out the man who wants the cops to do something about his wife who has gone out without making his sandwiches.
Excellent parodies also available. (Score:5, Funny)
Take a look at the excellent [twitter.com] parodies [twitter.com] too.
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Sadly, some of the real calls are indistinguishable from parodies.
http://twitter.com/gmp24_1/status/27329849789 [twitter.com]
http://twitter.com/gmp24_3/status/27326427592 [twitter.com]
http://twitter.com/gmp24_4/status/27328848357 [twitter.com]
The last one is possibly the oddest.
I like the idea. (Score:4, Informative)
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Usually I do not answer people low enough to offend gratuitous under the protection of anonymity, but in this case I open an exception to prevent someone read what you spit and unintentionally may think that is the truth.
Anonymous, in my country most people think the firefighters' work is just putting out fires. And I stress the part "most". And they are not "dunces", simply do not know, is rare here to show
Spoof accounts targeted by police (Score:3, Informative)
Looks like the GMP doesn't have much of a sense of humour - it's threatening spoof account holders with the crime of impersonating a police officer [thinq.co.uk]. Shame, because some of 'em are very well done - such as the Super Mario Brothers version...
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Probably so they don't go over the API limits on one account.
Delay? (Score:1)
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Police scanners make it possible to get advance notice every day.
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Police in the UK use TETRA [wikipedia.org], an encrypted radio system.
Local volunteer fire departments already do this (Score:3, Insightful)
The complexity of modern policing is trying to figure out if a petty criminal is more dangerous to a large group of citizens than a corporation committing massive fraud.
Why would they need to force post their calls? (Score:1)
Since when was Twitter located in the UK; since when did the police have the right to force a web site to post their stuff?
The UK police could just tweet them, you know; like everyone else does.
Then they wouldn't have to go through the nasty steps of "force posting"
Life imitating art? (Score:2)
Reminds me alot of Neasden Police station log from Private Eye. From wikipedia, as I can't find an example online:
"A fictional police station log, satirising current police policies that are met with general contempt and/or disdain. Ordinary police activities are ignored, with police attention limited to 'counter-terrorism' and obsessive political correctness and pointless bureaucracy. Examples may include an incident in which an elderly woman is attacked by a gang of youths, and is arrested (and unfortunat
well, my [cohabitor]'s abusing me... (Score:4, Interesting)
...and I know what happens if he finds out I've reported it, so I guess I won't now.
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In the US, this kind of thing is reported in the paper anyway. It is not a new phenomenon. It's the reason why places like the YWCA and various women's shelters exist, and why people like me went to school for social work.
There's plenty of resources out there for battered, well, anybody. However, it takes a very, very determined mind to actually go for it. Even in my very limited experience, I've watched abused persons who finally escaped a life of abuse (with their children, no less) not show up to the cou