At first glance, Twitter may seem completely pointless, even frivolous. People join to post 140-character “microblogs” for the benefit of those who “follow” them. To demonstrate Twitter’s apparent pointlessness, its detractors have made much of “tweets” such as: “Going to brush my teeth now,” or “What should I have for breakfast?”

Nevertheless, there are law enforcement agencies on Twitter. And they’re using it to some advantage. For instance, a recent Des Moines Register article discussed its role in the Coralville (IA) Police Department‘s community relations strategy: to tweet critical radio traffic and links to press releases. Other departments follow similar strategies, including links to police logs and information about traffic patterns.

Joe Manna’s comprehensive blog entry on Twitter use among police departments lists those agencies, and goes into some depth on the future potential for Twitter as well as its current application. (Be sure to read his pros and cons in comments, along with comments from practitioner PortsmouthPD — a.k.a. Scott White — and thoughts from Lt. Tom Gerace of the Cheektowaga (NY) Police Department.)

I would add that once department administrators have figured out how and what to tweet, their challenge is to get people to listen: to publicize their efforts to the larger community. Traditional news media coverage, the department’s own website, and word of mouth may work best until more people become aware of Twitter’s capabilities.

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Tags: Coralville Iowa, Des Moines Register, New media, Police, Scott White, Tom Gerace, Twitter, Word of mouth

This entry was posted on December 1, 2008 at 10:40 pm and is filed under 2.0 Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.