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Increasingly, Police and Fire Departments Turning to Twitter

by Ian Rowan on April 15, 2009 at 05:25 PM


Twitter has not yet ceased to amaze us. A growing number of law enforcement agencies have taken to the 140-character tweet to aid in serving and protecting their citizens, according to an AP report. The Milwaukee Police Department has been tweeting about homicide suspects, community improvements, robbery surveillance footage on their YouTube channel, gang arrests, missing persons, Milwaukee's Most Wanted, and even what the police chief is eating for lunch. Departments around the country have taken to Twitter like cops to a donut shop, those of Boston, Massachusetts, Boulder, Colorado, Richmond, Virginia and Mount Pleasant, South Carolina among them.

Not wanting to be left behind, fire departments have begun using the service, as well, as a way of transmitting and receiving alerts. Fire departments in both Napa, California and Mesa, Arizona have tweeted in regards to fires and other concerns relating to their jurisdictions. The FBI Press Office has been tweeting regarding missing persons, cold cases and their high-profile busts. We especially like the soothing purple the FBI folks chose for their page's background (pictured above).


But there have also been reports of anonymous online users falsely claiming to represent fire departments or law enforcement entities and wreaking havoc upon duped followers. A fake twitter account called "Austin PD" was recently shut down by the Texas Attorney General's office. The creator, still unidentified, used the real seal of the Austin Police Department and posted tweets like, "Warming up my radar gun for SXSW."

Luckily for law enforcement, there is an 'official' version of Twitter that they can use: Nixle. With partners like VeriSign, the Police Executive Research Forum and the National Sheriffs Association, the service delivers trusted content to location-specific Web communities like those of municipalities, neighborhoods and police departments. Although the service is not all that widespread yet, anyone can join and have location-specific e-mails, texts or messages delivered when actually relevant.

If you are on Twitter, you may want to follow your local police department; you might start paying attention to your tweets again. [From: AP Via: Fox News]

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Tags: fbi, law enforcement, LawEnforcement, nixle, police, twitter

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