It seems like everyone and everything is signing up for Twitter these days, even police stations. Police across North America are using Twitter to keep the community updated on their activities, recruiting people for police careers, sharing crime prevention tips and reports on murder suspects.
The Waterloo Regional Police have joined the ranks of several North American police stations using the service. Locally the police have already used the service to request witnesses for automobile accidents, notify drivers of road closures, and remind people to drive safely. They also post their weekly and nightly incident reports, those interested can see what crimes the police have responded to and a brief description of the incident.
Waterloo Regional Police spokesman Olaf Heinzel says the station is “looking at different ways we can get our message out to the community. We’re trying to reach out to the community in a number of different ways.” They are even looking at other social networking tools to see if any can help promote the agency.
While most people are not interested in the ins and outs of police work in the region the Twitter page is a great way of organizing and distributing information to the public. At the time of this posting the Waterloo Regional Police have 42 followers on Twitter, their Twitter name is WRPSMediaRel.
Twitter is a privately funded startup with offices in the SoMA neighborhood of San Francisco, CA. Started as a side project in March of 2006,... [more]
