From beat to tweet... police spead the message in their battle against crime

JUST 12 months ago, Sergeant James Main of Humberside Police only had a very faint understanding of what Twitter was. He certainly wouldn’t have considered it a crime-fighting tool.

But a year later his personal account now boasts more than 5,400 followers and his tweets have led to a number of arrests and convictions. Were it not for the social networking site, those arrests and convictions might not have been secured so quickly. They might not have been secured at all.

Initially Sgt Main, better known as @SgtJamesMain, had to be convinced. (In fact, he had to go on a crash course before he could even get started.) But, once the benefits became clear, it wasn’t long before he became a social network convert.

“I remember a CID officer asked me to put a tweet out for an appeal following quite a nasty assault,” he says.“Often she would put out a press release through conventional media, sometimes without much success.

“But within 30 minutes of putting that Tweet out in the morning, we actually had the offender’s vehicle, registration number and two names given 
to us.

“The beauty of Twitter is that you’re reaching such a high number of people in such a short space of time. That’s why we have so much success and why Twitter is now, essentially, a part of everyday policing for us.

“In fact, I’ve just put out an appeal for a missing 15-year-old schoolgirl and you should see the amount of retweets we get.”

Sgt Main formed part of a trial number of Humberside officers using Twitter. Now its use has spread across the force and across the region. But he boasts one of the biggest followings.

“It has exceeded all our expectations,” he says. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say we couldn’t manage without it, but let’s just say Twitter is now part-and-parcel of our tool box.

“It costs us 30 seconds of time to compose a Tweet. And if something happens you don’t have to wait for the next day’s newspapers to get something out there, to use the general public’s eyes and ears.”

In fact, he sees it as being so vital he even checks his Twitter home page on days off, lest he miss any vital appeals or information sent in from the public.

But the biggest bonus is reaching out to young people who are a substantial presence on Twitter.

“They are a hard-to-reach group,” says Sgt Main. “We have meetings in areas where older people tend to attend, but getting younger people to come to those meetings is difficult.

“Whereas with social media you actually have that captive audience. We have quite a following now with some of the schools and students.

“As a result, that builds up a trust and a relationship. Twitter hasn’t replaced traditional methods of policing, it’s just another alternative. It’s actually enhanced traditional policing and put a human face on it. Social networking breaks down barriers and shows that we’re actually human beings under the uniform.”

PC Matt Guy, who walks the beat at Leeds University, knows only too well the importance, and the difficulties, of reaching out to young people.

He’s only been in the job a matter of months, but one of the first things he did on arrival was set up a Twitter account which he could use to interact with the student population.

“I think it’s as much a way of combating the fear of crime,” says PC Guy “It’s letting people know who we are, what we look like and where we are.

“It also reassures people that we are looking into anything and everything, all those crimes which people really care about, as much as the really big things.”

Working in an environment where PC Guy (@PCMattGuy) is surrounded by increasingly tech-savvy teenagers and 20-somethings makes Twitter a necessity

“It’s about developing a conversation with the students, whether that’s via the staff at the university or the students’ union. Because there is a problem with students not reporting crime. The other week we had a case where a group of people jumped out on passers-by in Hyde Park and tried to mug them. Unfortunately for the muggers they picked on some big rugby lads and they sent them on their way. But those lads needed to make everyone aware of that, because the next person they jump out on might not be able to look after themselves in the same way.”

Fortunately, some of the students have been forthcoming. Just a few days ago he received a tweet providing a lead into a local robbery investigation.

It’s also breaking down some of the perceptions of police as being distant and aloof – particularly among young people and, as is often the case at Leeds University, among young people from different cultures.

“I had to visit a house of Chinese students the other day,” says PC Guy. “And they seemed quite surprised to see me, which is perhaps because where they’re from if the police come knocking at your door it’s probably because you’ve done something wrong.

“And I think younger people in general think you’re going to be a bit of a Life on Mars character. But hopefully having a name, a face and a conversation with them on Twitter helps dispel that idea.”

Across the various Neighbourhood Policing Team zones in Leeds, some 2,500 people follow the activities of their local Bobbies. West Yorkshire Police alone now have a staggering 25,000 Twitter followers.

In neighbouring Harrogate, Sergeant Ed Rogerson, 31, has blazed a trail for the use of social networking in crime fighting. It all started five years ago when he created a YouTube appeal for help to find local graffiti vandals. The mini-film has since attracted over 50,000 views.

Five years later and he has almost 6,000 followers(one of the highest in the UK, no doubt the highest in the region) and his feed is regularly filled with tweets relaying multiple success stories.

But the biggest coup for Sgt Rogerson (@hotelalpha9) is the rise in his personal profile – and not for reasons of ego.

“I took a prisoner in the other day and he told me he recognised me and it turns out he actually follows me on Twitter,” he laughs. “But that’s a positive thing because it not only makes the public aware of the fact you are out and about it also makes potential offenders aware of that fact too. It’s reassurance for the general public but also a deterrent for would-be criminals.

“What’s also powerful is the broad spectrum of people using Twitter. It’s not just young people, it’s often older people who don’t always get out and about as much. But this allows you to make your presence known regardless. They can just log on and see that I am in their area, perhaps on their street. That adds to their peace of mind.

“Using Twitter is heightening that sense of community policing and I think the tagline on my Twitter page says it all: ‘I want to engage with my community in both modern & traditional ways.’”

Often seen patrolling while tweeting on his mobile, PC Rogerson is something of a local celebrity and a bit of a local hero too. Via Twitter he has regularly helped to bring in wanted persons and even returned an iPad found in Harrogate to its rightful owner – in Thailand.

He has also recently landed an arrest for criminal damage, via an appeal he put out on Twitter, and he’s just uploaded CCTV footage of a shoplifter police would like to speak to.

“I never really intended for Twitter to become some kind of crime-fighting tool, not initially,” says PC Rogerson. “It was just to let people know what I was doing.

“But interacting via Twitter has now become so normal, so widespread that it’s vital we keep up with the technology, in many ways we’re already playing catch up. And we do need to catch up because the technology is moving so fast.

“I started out using YouTube and Facebook and then moved on to Twitter, but you can bet that, sooner or later, something else will come along and supersede Twitter too.”

Still don’t know what Twitter is?

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that lets users send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as “tweets”.

The service was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and now has more than 500 million registered users worldwide.

Twitter has become one of the 10 most visited websites on the internet, generating more than 340 milion tweets daily and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day.

The service now has over 10 million users in Britain alone – almost one in six people in the country. Britain is the fourth largest user of Twitter in the world.