Saturday, October 16, 2010

Twitter Everything?

The police department in Manchester, England is "tweeting" nearly every incident over the course of their days in an effort to shine a spotlight on the work that they are expected to do in the face of massive budget cuts:
  • From stolen cars to suspicious smells, one of Britain's biggest police forces is tweeting every incident it deals with over a 24 hour-period to prove a point.

    The online Twitter campaign aims to show the pressures that police are under as British officials prepare for deep budget cuts.

  • The project, which began at 5:00 a.m. Thursday, has already racked up more than 1,300 different incidents. Among the first tweets: An alert about a stolen vehicle thought to be headed for Manchester, the arrest of an aggressive shoplifter, and a report that "a man appears asleep at bus stop.''

  • Many tweets covered domestic incidents, traffic accidents, stolen cars and missing people. There were calls about animals, complaints about a man urinating against a school wall, and a report of someone smoking on an incoming flight to Manchester Airport.

    There were also dozens of false alarms.

Someone from the 911 building can get specifics, but this 2007 article says Chicago handles something like 5.5 million calls a year. That averages to over 15,000 calls a day and we know the volume hasn't gone down. And in case anyone here needs reminding, the number of officers has gone down. Significantly. Especially on the streets and since we're the only major department in existence that still sends a car to 95% of the calls, guess what that means?

We aren't big fans about starting up a "twitter" unit - people would start calling them "twits" in short order - but maybe the Crystal Ball Unit could "twitter" in their spare time seeing as how they haven't predicted anything yet aside from two Bears victories. 5.5 million "tweets" are a lot of event numbers.

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7 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Not a tweet, but worth checking out-

http://homicides.redeyechicago.com/

10/16/2010 01:07:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Most people probably know this but as a refresher, you can usually tell how busy a day has been by the event numbers we get for, well, all the events in a day.
We usually ask for "the last five" of the event number. The first five refer to the date: the first two for the year (10), the next three for the day (001 for jan. 1, 002 for jan. 2, etc.). The last five are the events of that day in chronological order. there are usually 15,000 to 18,000 event numbers on an average day (my guess), but on the really busy days of summer and full moons, the event numbers will exceed 20,000. We are an extremely busy department.

10/16/2010 02:10:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

GOOD IDEA

10/16/2010 03:39:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Or the calls of construction work starting too early, or they don't have a permit,the neighbors dog is barking, 2 or more kids are on the corner and they LOOK like they are ready to fight, the neighbor is watering his lawn and the water is getting onto complainants grass, domestic between mother and kid (kid won't go to school),etc, etc.

10/16/2010 05:59:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jolly good!

10/16/2010 10:10:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

There already is a twitter unit, and facebook too...as a part of the Supt's office, two P.O.s are in charge of it and all his press releases, Blog 501, etc...

10/16/2010 03:20:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"From stolen cars to suspicious smells, one of Britain's biggest police forces is tweeting every incident it deals with over a 24 hour-period to prove a point...the pressures that police are under as British officials prepare for deep budget cuts.

"The project, which began at 5:00 a.m. Thursday, has already racked up more than 1,300 different incidents... a report that 'a man appears asleep at bus stop.'"

What can I say? You've created a topsy-turvy, deindustrialized welfare state in which the gap between the snotty rich and the desperate poor widens daily, you're packing the place with hostile aliens, you've wired the whole thing with millions of cameras, and now you can't chase the resultant radio calls because all the police beef is indoors in white shirts in "control centers" filming the guy sleeping at the bus stop and estimating next year's budget for themselves.

Tweet away, for all the good it will do you. The "higher taxes = fewer services" phenomenon is in full swing.

This is the Daley model for Chicago -- in case everyone hasn't noticed already.

10/16/2010 04:48:00 PM  

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