Canberrans have used Twitter to quiz police about officer numbers, recruitment and training, and whether there were enough patrols on our streets.
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ACT Policing exchanged more than 270 tweets with Canberrans in one hour on Monday night as part of their second Twitter forum.
Perhaps not surprisingly, many Canberrans complained about their fellow territorian’s driving habits and sought advice on how to report incidents to the police.
Chief Police Officer Rudi Lammers and Deputy Chief Officers Charmaine Quade and David Pryce encouraged people to ask any reasonable question of the force using the hash-tag #ACTPolForum.
Ogilvy managing director Yianni Konstantopoulos said the exercise "appears to have been a great success for the department" and is likely to be replicated by other departments across Australia.
"The content and the questions seemed genuine and authentic, and the department was very quick in replying to actual people," he said.
"None of the questions really bordered anything inappropriate and those topics that were controversial simply didn't get a reply."
The forum also gave some users an insight into the force they may not have otherwise obtained.
Assistant Commissioner Lammers said police officers were sprayed with pepper-spray during their training to experience the pain for themselves.
Police began the forum by warning that questions regarding statistics would have to be answered the following day. Discussions related to ongoing investigations or court hearings were off-limits and police stressed that crimes should not be reported on social media.
While most Twitter users were appreciative of the event, some felt the engagement could have been a little more transparent.
One regular Twitter user, Richard Tuffin, said the forum was “a great initiative and it’s brilliant to have these opportunities to talk to leading official in these agencies”.
He said the “rather stringent conditions” established before the forum began were initially off-putting although he understood the sensitivities of the police engagement.
“I thought some of the answers were a little too careful and lacking in description – we weren’t given too much detail by the officers,” he said.
But Dr Sean Rintel, a social media expert at The University of Queensland, said "police PR is very difficult given we typically interact with the police only in times of trouble/crisis, so I'd say this was rather successful."
"Answers to more difficult questions got 'well it's complicated' responses," he said.
"That's probably a smart tactic for the medium. You can't get into the complexities in 140 characters. The best you can do is link to more detailed pages."
Another regular user, @TinyTheCabbie, who asked two questions of the police, said the forum was brilliant although there were fewer contributors to discussion than expected.
“I’d like to see more forums,” he said. “Four times a year wouldn’t do justice in my opinion. They have enough staff to run it at least once a month.”