Police work can seem cool and mysterious from afar, but today a number of local police agencies are allowing residents to ride along—virtually.

Today is the first Global Police Tweet-a-Thon, when police departments from across the country and world will be taking followers on an inside tour of day-by-day police work, 140 characters at a time. The virtual ride-along started at 8 a.m. and will continue for 24 hours.

Locally, police departments from Prince George’s County and Prince William County are participating; the Metropolitan Police Department, sadly, is not. (They could have live-tweeted Officer Wingblade in Falcon 1 and raked in the new followers.)

If you get a chance, do yourself a favor and follow the Prince George’s County Police Department as it live-tweets an ordinary day in the life of the department. So far, we’ve gotten a bunch of tweets from a training session with drug-sniffing dogs (“Rambo took just seconds to find the hidden crack cocaine. Good find,” read one tweet), and a ride-along with a Robbery Suppression Team is up next.

Sweet.