In Seattle, approximately 3,000 cars are stolen every year. Police officers recover about 80 percent of them, which means that 600 honest citizens lose theirs forever. The Seattle Police Department wanted to do something about it and, lo and behold, Twitter may well represent the solution!
In order to improve recovery rates and limit the number of car thefts in the area, the SPD created a new Twitter account (@getyourcarback) specifically to tweet real-time information on stolen vehicles and encourage the public to help out.
''Criminals are already using social networking, even posting on Twitter and Facebook about the houses they've broken into or the items they've stolen,'' explains Lt. Mike Edwards of the SPD's investigations procedures unit. "It's just one more thing they're using, so we want to use it, too."
Depending on how well the program works, police could eventually use Twitter to alert people about traffic collisions and road closures, or to quickly publicize descriptions of crime suspects.
Police in Albuquerque, N.M. have been issuing Twitter alerts about stolen cars and have reportedly seen some marked success in a city with one of the highest car theft rates in the U.S. You could say that the SPD literally took a page out of their (online) book.
The regular SPD account (@SeattlePD) already has 7,178 followers at the time of writing and tweets real-time information on major police events, including crimes and investigation results.
Source: The Seattle Times
In order to improve recovery rates and limit the number of car thefts in the area, the SPD created a new Twitter account (@getyourcarback) specifically to tweet real-time information on stolen vehicles and encourage the public to help out.
''Criminals are already using social networking, even posting on Twitter and Facebook about the houses they've broken into or the items they've stolen,'' explains Lt. Mike Edwards of the SPD's investigations procedures unit. "It's just one more thing they're using, so we want to use it, too."
Depending on how well the program works, police could eventually use Twitter to alert people about traffic collisions and road closures, or to quickly publicize descriptions of crime suspects.
Police in Albuquerque, N.M. have been issuing Twitter alerts about stolen cars and have reportedly seen some marked success in a city with one of the highest car theft rates in the U.S. You could say that the SPD literally took a page out of their (online) book.
The regular SPD account (@SeattlePD) already has 7,178 followers at the time of writing and tweets real-time information on major police events, including crimes and investigation results.
Source: The Seattle Times