Remember those old-time movies where police tweeted a whistle to get citizens' help?
Police Sgt. Jim Morrison has begun doing the same thing in University City's Response Area 3 - except he plans to Tweet for citizen help via text messages and Twitter.
"This will allow everyone who is tied into my Twitter account to instantly get the information and be watching for these suspects and passing any new information on to us via 911!" he explained in an e-mail announcing the new Twitter alerts.
As of last weekend, 140 people have signed on to get Morrison's instant alerts. 140, coincidentally, is the maximum number of characters that a person can use in a Twitter message, also called a Tweet.
As Morrison explained in his announcement and an accompanying document on how to take part, Twitter is a communication service that lets people send Tweets to people who have signed up to receive them.
Followers, as Twitter calls them, can get Tweets in several ways, but the fastest and most useful format to police is via text messages to cell phones.
Morrison says he can literally take the information from a 911 call about a crime in progress, send out a Tweet, and "then, instead of just one witness, I now have EVERYONE in that area looking out their windows for these suspects.
"Anyone sitting at home, driving on the streets, walking the dog, becomes another pair of eyes we have on the street to help us located the criminals!"
Police nationwide have begun adopting Twitter as a crime-fighting tool.
"It's a police scanner for the digital world," A spokesman for the Shawnee, OK, police department told CNN last spring.
As commander of Response Area 3 in the University City Division, Sgt. Morrison oversees police protection west and south of UNC Charlotte, including neighborhoods along Back Creek Road, Old Concord Road and Rocky River Road.
Morrison sent out his first Tweet last week.
"Looking for 3 black males who just broke into a home on Saddle Trail Ln in RA1, (another of University City's three response areas)," the alert began. Morrison used three Tweets totaling 383 characters and spaces to provide detailed descriptions of the suspects.
Morrison hopes many more University City residents will have signed up as followers by the time he needs to Tweet again.
The service is free. The cost depends on your cell-phone service plan but could run 10-35 cents per Tweet, Morrison explained in his note while promising to limit Tweets to breaking-crime reports.
"Please everyone, take a few minutes and help the police department fight crime in your neighborhoods!" he concluded in his email. "This will help to make your communities a safer place, but it needs your participation to make it work!
WANT TO FOLLOW SGT. MORRISON?
Here are the registration instructions provided by Sgt. Morrison. You also can contact him by phone at 704-432-3976 or by email at jmorrison@cmpd.org
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WHAT IS TWITTER AND HOW DOES IT WORK?
Answers.com simplifies it the best I think:
Twitter - Twitter is a communication service that enables you to quickly send out short messages about what you are doing to a network of people. It works a lot like Facebook, for those of you who are familiar with that, only without all the frills.
You create a Twitter account in just a few minutes, find people you want to communicate with, and then you can send and receive short messages, called "Tweets".
For the purposes of my Police Project this is what I would need from everyone:
1. Go to Twitter.com and create an account for yourself (it is Free and takes only a couple of minutes).
2. Locate my page and hit the button to "Follow" me.
3. Enter your cell phone number on your own account page if you would like to receive my updates directly on your cell phone.
4. And that's it! Sit back and wait for a crime update to come in! It really is that easy and for just a few minutes of your time we can have potentially thousands of people receiving my breaking crime updates and helping us locate criminals!
DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS TO HELP YOU GET UP AND RUNNING:
1) The first step is to go to Twitter at http://twitter.com/ and hit the green "Sign up now" button on the right side of the page.
2) Next you will come to the screen where you can enter in your name, select a user name and password, and create your account. Be sure to remove the checkmark from the "I want the inside scoop" box unless you WANT to receive advertisement emails from Twitter.
3) You can skip the next step unless you WANT Twitter to check the email addresses in your address book to see if any of your friends are already on Twitter.
4) On the next page you will see a number of boxes already check marked. Unless you want to follow these people and groups, you should Uncheck the box labeled "Select all" and hit Continue.
5) That's it! Your account is created and you can now find my account to follow by clicking on the "Find People" button at the top of the screen.
6) This will bring you to a screen where you can type my username - MorrisonCMPD - into the search box to locate my account.
7) Click on the "Follow" button and you will be connected to my account and being receiving my posts!
ADDING YOUR CELL PHONE TO YOUR ACCOUNT:
Now that you've set up your account and are following mine, the last thing you need to do is add your cell phone to your account so you will get my updates on your mobile. Below are the instructions for doing so:
1. From your account's home page just go to the settings page. 2. Click on the device settings tab, enter your phone number, and Twitter will give you a verification code. Be sure to check mark the box allowing Twitter to send you messages.
3. Text the code you are given to Twitter using the number displayed in your web page and that will connect your phone to your account.
4. After you send the text message, just refresh the page where you got your code from and if the code is gone, your phone is verified. Twitter will send you a confirmation on your phone.
ONE LAST STEP
Only one last step to make sure you get my updates on your phone. Now that your phone is activated just go to my homepage and look for the little Mobile Phone Icon. Click on it and it will turn green to indicate that my messages will now be sent to your phone as a text message.
All done! Now any updates I send to my page should go to your phone. If you see any on your accounts page and you didn't get them on your phone please recheck these instructions to make sure you set it up correctly or send me an email/call me and I will help you with it.
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