Twitter milestone

The West Midlands Police twitter account reached another milestone last month as it gained its 150,000th follower.

From breaking news to local road closures, CCTV appeals to sentencing outcomes, @wmpolice continues to provide the most up-to-date and accurate policing information to the region.

As well as providing the latest policing news, the account has contributed to several investigations, with dozens of suspects identified and charged following CCTV appeals shared widely across the social network.

A number of the region's most wanted individuals have also been identified, arrested and jailed following recent #wantedwednesday tweets - a monthly event that sees custody images shared widely on both the force's Twitter and Facebook pages.

Away from crime, the account has served as a useful tool for raising awareness of support groups and useful telephone numbers. Calls to 999 were significantly reduced in the weeks following a contact centre tweet-a-thon that saw nuisance emergency calls shared with the public. This also resulted in 30,000 new followers joining @WMPolice over a 24 hour period.

The flagship account was launched in December 2008 and was the first to be set up by any British police force.

Since then, the account has evolved beyond all recognition and now has enough followers to fill Birmingham's National Indoor Arena twelve times over - the equivalent of capacity crowds at the Molineux, Villa Park, Bescot, St Andrew's and the Hawthorns combined.

West Midlands Police is also responsible for a number of Twitter firsts; the first force to tweet live from a drugs raid, the first force to hold a forensic tweet-a-thon and the first force to tweet live from a terrorism court case - when Pavlo Lapshyn was jailed for the murder of Mohammed Saleem and a bombing campaign across the Black Country.

Meanwhile officers of all ranks, from PC to Deputy Chief Constable, as well as police staff and special constables, have a presence on the social networking site and are actively encouraged to share updates local to their area of work.
Head of Corporate Communications Dan Barton said: "To reach 150,000 followers is a remarkable achievement - and having a collective audience of 800,000 people across all 250+ of our Twitter accounts is fantastic.
"We're working hard to keep the public as informed and updated as possible around significant policing work, and see social media as being a vital tool in providing quick, accurate information directly to the people we serve.
"Furthermore, our social media channels play an increasingly important role in bringing offenders to justice, and have helped with the investigation of many crimes."