Dunwoody police to tweet all calls during 24-hour period starting Friday at 6 a.m.

By Kristi E. Swartz

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Dunwoody police have taken their use of social media to a new level.

They will be tweeting every call during a 24-hour period starting Friday at 6 a.m., Chief Billy Grogan said.

“To give everybody a view of what we do in a typical day, we’re going to tweet all of our calls,” Grogan said. “It will give them kind of an idea of what we do and how busy we are.”

Dunwoody police officers respond to a total of between 60 and 100 calls each day. The department took about 31,000 calls in 2010, Grogan said.

Two supervisors will be tweeting the information: Sgt. Jason Dove, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Sgt. Jason Witcher from 6 p.m to 6 a.m.

The department’s Twitter account is @DunwoodyPolice. Friday, all calls will be marked with a #DPDcalls hashtag.

Grogan said Friday’s efforts are just one more way the police department can connect with the community.

“One of the ways you can build trust is through transparency,” he said.

The police department has a Facebook page and a Twitter account, both of which are updated frequently.

Grogan said that while making note of a call in 140 characters or less won’t take that long, the officers won’t let it get in the way of doing their jobs.

“If they are busy, they aren’t going to be tweeting the calls, they are going to be handling the calls,” he said. “If we have something bad happen, we may not tweet for a couple of hours if we are dealing with a situation.”