There are now approximately 51 police forces using Social Media and in particular, Twitter, to communicate and engage with the public and their regional communities about how they spend their days and providing advice on how to stay safe day to day. There are also approximately 1,649 official police Twitter accounts belonging to police officers and other official staff members.

These 51 police forces and official police accounts combined have got a whopping 1.37 million followers reading their tweets, which is 2.5% of the population over the age of 10 and based on recent figures, means about one in ten Twitter users is following a police related account on Twitter.

The first police Twitter account was opened by Inspector Nick Glynn of the Leicestershire Constabulary back in 2008, and not long after, the West Midlands police became the first force to join the platform. All the police forces in the UK now have a Twitter account but who has the most followers?

Police Twitter accounts in the UK send over 3,000 tweets a day and you can see them all in real time for the past seven days on the Less Crime site. This provides a very handy way to monitor all police related tweets and even connect with their from your own Twitter account.

The police using Twitter have recently come under fire however, after a mugging victim complained that too many official police accounts were following brands, celebrities and sports team such as Rihanna, Christian Louboutin and Andy Murray. The complaint lead to a nationwide social media clean-up of all police accounts and timely followed on from Police Scotland’s account facing criticism for sending an offensive tweet to a columnist from its account.

Social Media is a fantastic way for police forces and officials to keep in touch with the communities around them and even in some cases collect evidence, like back in 2012 when Surrey Police held a Tweconstruction in the hope someone on Twitter could give them some answers.

With these examples and more, it is clear to see that social media is becoming an increasingly important tool for the police to perform their duties on a day to day basis, and there is huge scope for this to develop further and really become an instrument in solving crimes and perhaps even preventing them happening in the first place.