Seattle Police Use Twitter To Help Locate Stolen Vehicles

When a car is reported stolen, an officer will confirm the report and get the owner’s signature on a form, Lt. Mike Edwards of the department’s investigations procedures unit said. Once that form is signed, the officer will call into the dispatch center and the information — a vehicle’s color, year, make, model, body type and license-plate number — will be tweeted to Twitter followers.

“It’s a force multiplier,” with citizens helping police see stolen vehicles and, hopefully, get them back to their owners more quickly, Edwards said.

Full Story – HERE

The Twitter page – HERE

Interesting idea if it works for them.  I could see it also working in the favor of criminals because they could just ditch a car once it has been tweeted.


Comments

4 responses to “Seattle Police Use Twitter To Help Locate Stolen Vehicles”

  1. If the car is spotted by the public or if the criminal ditches the car because of the tweet, then the system works, the owner will get the car back faster

    1. Admin (Mike) Avatar
      Admin (Mike)

      Good point Thomas. The only problem with that is that it might make catching car thieves harder because they know when to ditch the car. If they are that good at stealing cars then it wouldn’t be much of an issue for them to steal another right after they ditched the previous one which they saw on twitter.

  2. i don’t know if i like the idea of twitter being used for something constructive.

  3. Can’t I just DM them? :-)