Suffolk police will be hosting a 24-hour Tweetathon today to give the public a rare glimpse into the sheer number and range of calls its officers face on a daily basis.
From 7am officers based in the control room will tweet basic information about the calls they receive, as long as it doesn’t get in the way of regular policing duties.
Chief Inspector Matt Rose, who will coordinate the Tweetathon, said: “In this age of transparency, we wanted to offer a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse into not only the breadth of calls we receive but to communicate the variety of work we do and highlight some of the successes and challenges of policing. On an average day our control room operators receive approximately 800 calls on a range of issues relating to mental health, vulnerability and requests for information, alongside calls reporting crime or from people needing urgent help.
“December is definitely one of our busiest months in terms of police resourcing and, particularly as the festive season approaches, we are urging the public to think about when they should call the police.
“This Tweetathon is a great way for us to actively engage with members of the public in a different way and highlight the reality of policing.
“Our tweets will not identify callers, but we hope they will provide an interesting insight into police activity and draw attention to which calls could have been directed to our website or those that could have been dealt with by partner agencies.”
This will be the second time the constabulary have held a Tweetathon, the first taking place in December 2015.
Ch Insp Rose added: “The response last time was overwhelmingly positive, with people sharing, liking and commenting on our posts.
“It was reassuring to see so many people interested in what their police service does. We’re not looking to compete with figures of engagement from two years ago, but we do want to draw on the comparisons regarding the types of calls we receive and encourage people to really consider how they contact us.”
Suffolk PCC Tim Passmore said: “Getting an insight into the control room is a really good opportunity for everyone to see exactly what our police officers deal with on a day to day basis, and doing this in real-time makes this a particularly authentic.”
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