Manchester cops hit Twitter - spoof feeds fall down stairs Greater Manchester Police decided to show the world just how tough it is policing England's third city by tweeting every report it receives for 24 hours. The results so far tell a story of stretched resources, organisational confusion, police communications hijacked by criminals and pranksters, and coppers ending up in jail - …
Once again the authorities demonstrate their complete lack of competence in dealing with modern technology and end up having rings run around them by everyone else.
I wonder if there's been a tweet of "drunk bloke driving jaguar crashed. he gave me funny handshake so i let him off with a warning"?
Or "saw bunch of chavs burgling house but was too busy nicking car driver for 33 mph in 30 limit on empty road"?
but if they stopped the chavs then they might have been underage so identifying them is hard, proving burglary is hard enough so probably a hit to the detection rate and lots of paperwork. 33 in a 30 is statutory so an instant plus on the detection rate and the paperwork is a lot lower.
The custody sargeant is also a prick so he never likes underage chavs being brought in.
According to that website the London figure of 7.2 million is Greater London (not the city it self). So in that light, Greater Manchester has a population of 2.6 million. I hate the way they always have to portray London as so far ahead of everywhere else in everything. Make sure you include all small print with your arguments!
To be honest you're lucky the report said 3rd.
Strictly speaking Manchester is the 9th (yes NINTH) largest city in the UK and only the 7th in England. I would be more annoyed if I lived in Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, or Bristol...all of which are larger than Manchester. People 'think' Manchester is larger due to the footie teams and airport.
PS. Birmingham is over twice the size (and population) of Manchester..so you have a long way to go before you can moan about not being second. And all of the above have some way to go to reach London (even if added together).
For the record...the 4rd largest city in England is Liverpool (followed closely by Leeds, Sheffield and Bristol).
Having spent a year in the Met Police (some 30 years ago now) when I was younger I can confirm that you get a number of very weird calls.
Can remember getting a call about Goats running around some flats in inner London eating the bushes, as there used to be a occaisional "wind up's" of newbies from bored radio operators I went to this one with an "ok, let's let them have their fun" sort of attitude, was only when I got close to the location I ran into a very harassed looking guy shouting "back in a minute, just got to get some ropes to tie my goats up", sure enough 3 of them nibbling the privet hedges.
Some of the older guys later told me they'd chased all manner of unlikely creatures including a wallaby, and the unforgettable tale of the guy who kicked a known villains door in to be confronted by a lion (before the dangerous animals Act, beats a pit bull any day!)
I'm sure a large number of us on here are used to seeing IT support requests submitted from people who do not know one end of keyboard from the other - this has been a real opener into a world of people raising "support" requests who do not know one end of life from the other.
Stabbed horses, car handles smeared in shit, sexual assaults, harassment from ex-partners, burglary, fighting, car crashes, theft, drugs, dog attacks...
It has been enthralling.
It has also been soul-destroying, I bet this is an average day for the call handlers, it really is sickening to see what kind of a society we actually live.
We've messed up boys and girls. We might have 2TB harddrives, wireless internet, suspension bridges, self driving cars, rockets built in sheds et al but scratch the surface we've got:
call 1425 Threat by ex-partner #gmp24
call 1430 sexual assault #gmp24
call 1423 Suspicious man in the garden on Tuesday night in Wigan #gmp24
..etc..etc..etc..
It will be the same again tomorrow and the day after and the day after...
"Stabbed horses, car handles smeared in shit, sexual assaults, harassment from ex-partners, burglary, fighting, car crashes, theft, drugs, dog attacks..." - Just another day in Manchester
"soul-destroying" - like I said...
"We might have 2TB harddrives, wireless internet.." - not there they dont.
/coat, obviously
...is letting the world eavesdrop on police live data somewhat less than a good idea?
Or maybe the idea is to trick naughty boys and girls into incriminating themselves.
"Arrested Dixons truck driver for DUI in Muggins Road. He says I can't bcs some1 will probly nick all the HD TVs out the back. I say don't worry I'll come back in an hour 2 check ok."
Some other fine Two Ronnies should-be moments:
"Call says a deep hole opened up in the middle of the high st. squad car 5 team are looking into it."
"Toilets are blocked in the cells. Lady next door says she has seen inmates going over the wall."
"Prison van 2 court collided on motorway with a cement mixer, be on lookout for 5 hardened criminals"
"Boat on the canal with a load of red paint has hit another boat shipping purple paint. both crews were marooned"
Back in those ancient days when I was a child, the magic of getting one of the new "VHF" radios was not the clarity of reception of the home service, it was being able to listen in to the police car radios.
I'm told that this was actually used by, err, older people for more than just fun.
It's difficult to tell the difference between the spoof accounts and the real ones. Here's some genuine ones from http://twitter.com/gmp24_1, complete with typos:
Call 2597 A group of five young boys drunk, officers attend. They were just five scouts walkking past a takeaway, Trafford #gmp24
Call 2841 A suspicious man was whistling in the street last night in Chorlton #gmp24
call 1634 suspicious men carrying a snake, Bolton #gmp24
call 2698 possible sighting of wanted man. Police stop man and find he is not wanted. #gmp24
I hope they introduce a delay between reports and tweeting them or the get-away driver will be sitting outside in the car watching his twitter feed on his smart phone for any mention of a silent alarm at the bank he's waiting outside!
My local Fire brigade have been doing this with a feed on their website for quite some time (i.e. >140 characters). As a photographer this has resulted in some great photos, and some of the reports are barely able to disguise the amusement of the operator. Such as the guy who tried to deal with a spider for his girlfriend with a can of hairspray. When the sprayed spider retreated out of sight he chose to illuminate the dark corner with a cigarette lighter... The resulting rapid combustion of the hair spray propellent swiftly removed him from the bathroom and dumped him on the landing!
TBH, I already know lots of this, a close family member is a copper and with a little nudge they'll often tell us of the utter chavvy futility of much of the work they do. Anyone who read Inspector Gadget's blog or Copperfield's blog will also know how screwed we are.
Of course, the best reason for it was to follow GMP24_0.
Call 049 - PC Bob's at the chippy now. What do we want? #gmp24
Call 051 - PC Bob informs us of lacking cod. Will haddock do? #gmp24
Call 052 - Chip shop owners report male customer has become abusive over lack of cod and is refusing to leave. #gmp24
Call 3113 Noises from empty property. It is believed property is being removed. Officers attend. Nobody seen. #gmp24
What? Someone trying to steal an entire house?
And in 24 hours they made 341 arrests? Ok, i know manchester is a city, but doesn't that strike anyone as a rather large number of arrests... is Manchester such a criminal city? Ok, ok, don't answer that one.
This is just an attempt to persuade the public that police need yet larger budgets, even whilst the rest of the country is suffering from cutbacks.
Happens in the U.S, Canada and Australia, etc. Let them make so with what they've got - which is generally much more than they had only two years ago.
They also should monitor those 'sleeping patrols' who seem to find out of the way spots to hide in.
My late Mother never was a deep sleeper and the beeps from the Plod radio's, from the local 'sleeping patrol', always woke her and she occasionally called in a 'suspicious noise' complaint which often resulted in the shift sergeant catching the sleepers who, despite repeated incidents, never did figure to sleep elsewhere.
It's so unlikely the police will ever accept that such propagandizing is not part of policing, it appears the most effective way of slowing them down will be starving them of the funds they waste.
(If they can bring themselves to sack the assorted marketing-driven idiots rather than getting rid of actual police, that is...)
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