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.'"
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!
Re:Excellent parodies also available. (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:So (Score:2, Interesting)
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 destroying the world! Oh my god, it could be the start of World War Three! This is what happens when you start dealing in "pre-crime" and acting out of "an abundance of caution". The guy who was jaywalking *COULD* be on his way to murder the Queen. But then again he might not be.
Personally I blame the lawyers - they are responsible for this behavior because they take the single victim from the group of 100 "threatened" persons, point to them and say "see? I told you so? THIS COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED" and slap you with a lawsuit. The reality is that the police are wasting their time 99% of the time when dealing with crap like this - it was never going to go anywhere anyway. The answer is not more police, and more use of force. The answer is educating people - just like all those idiots who crowd my emergency room because of the sniffles, which means the stroke and the heart attack need to wait 2 extra hours.
Fourth of all, why are the *police* part of this "whining women" bunch?
As someone else pointed out - the mere fact that they feel the need to post "how tough" it is to do their jobs classifies them as whiners.
In short, fuck off. You're not clever or witty, just a stupid asshole.
Is this the official law enforcement answer? I only say this because you referred to the police as "we". Why are you taking this personally? It's not like you designed the police force and turned it into what it is today. You're probably just a very small cog in a large machine, and you have no choice but to do your job as best you can. I am criticizing the machine as a whole, and society as a whole: not you. However when a person reacts in the manner you just did, it does speak about a certain level of insecurity.
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.