Tweets like the one shown above, detailing incidences of crime when they happen, seem like a natural fit for a city police department. But recently, the Metropolitan Police Department’s account has taken a different tack.

The Washington Post reported over the weekend that MPD had decided against tweeting out breaking crime news. An existing alert system—AlertDC—would do that, instead, leaving the police Twitter account to public relations and help with solving crimes (the idea, Lanier told the Post, was to streamline their various accounts).

But now, after an online outcry about the decision, the nearly 100,000 followers of the account will get their crime updates after all.

MPD started encrypting police scanners in 2011, saying that its Twitter account would function instead for people to learn about crime as it happened. Local reporter Alan Henney tweets out area crime using a mixture of the Fire and EMS scanner (which isn’t fully encrypted), websites that provide scanners, and well-placed sources (he’s also the treasurer of the local scanner enthusiasts club).

One place he doesn’t go to? Systems like AlertDC. “I’ve given up on all those alert messages or email systems,” he says. “They’ve been so unreliable and useless.” Henney says that police tweeting out crimes as soon as they happen helps media outlets, in particular local TV news, get to a scene quickly enough to record footage that’ll help the story make it to air.

Filed Under: d.c. police, mpd, twitter,