VPD constable to tweet throughout frigid night on DTES
Posted February 23, 2011 12:22 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Extreme cold is the focus of Vancouver Police for the next five days or so.
An officer will be on Twitter, sharing her experiences on the Downtown Eastside tomorrow night. Constable Mandy Scorrar will be Tweeting throughout her shift as officers hand out blankets and try to get the homeless inside.
Temperatures well below zero and windchills in the double digits are expected through the weekend. Constable Jodyne Kellar says HEAT shelters offer more beds during extreme cold.
She says no one will be turned away, adding, “If they need to be brought inside and they’re saying they don’t want to, and it’s very cold, and they’re not prepared, we can look at something like the Mental Health Act, and bring them to a hospital where it’s more appropriate for them.”
Scorrar says she had to be trained how to Tweet and was given a BlackBerry, though she says none of it will be done behind the wheel. She points out Twitter is a valuable tool for the police to communicate with the community and to show what a ‘day in the life’ is really like.
She says policing has changed since she started on the beat 15 years ago. “Back then you had to hand-write [police reports]. You didn’t have cell phones or the fancy computers in the car you have now!”
Meanwhile, SFU communications professor Peter Chow-White says this is one of the bigger moves Vancouver police have made since they started using Twitter last year. “It’s an interesting move to see them Tweeting as they go during a shift, trying to, on one hand, gain some eyeballs for their Twitter account, and at the same time, looking to be a little more accessible to the public and revealing some of their practices in real-time.”
He says VPD already has over six thousand followers, so there’s obviously an interest in their Twitter feed.
VPD Twitter Info:
@VancouverPD
hashtag: #CstMandy
