Rome Twitter police

Rome government allows citizens to tweet parking infractions to the police

If your city allowed you to quickly and easily notify the cops of parking infractions via a simple tweet, would you? In a new Twitter initiative from Rome’s municipal government, citizens of Rome are now allowed to tweet pictures of illegally parked cars to their local police’s official Twitter account. After review, the 5-O will promptly arrive at the tweeted destination and begin issuing out fines if necessary.

Since the new initiative kicked off, Reuters reports that more than 1,100 tweets have been sent flagging vehicles in a city packed to the walls with over 2.7 million people, and a ratio of 70 cars per 100 citizens. With those numbers alone, you start to paint a clearer picture of Rome’s parking epidemic.

But it’s not all cherry, according to those that have been using the new Twitter service, many a times the cops arrive on the scene hours later, when violators have already long gone. Perhaps response time will pick up as manpower increases, and it’s possible this new service will help facilitate that.

Nobody enjoys receiving parking tickets, and we can’t help but wonder how a program like this would fare in the states. In more crowded cities like Los Angeles or New York it could be well served, but the bigger question is just how easily accessible do we really need or want our law enforcement? Should something like this stop at only parking infractions, or would a country-wide 911 Twitter account for those really important emergencies be better suited?

[via Mashable]

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