Greater Manchester Police hailed its decision to put details on the twitter website of all 3,205 incidents it handled over a 24-hour period as a success, saying it had highlighted the difficulty of the job.
The force tweeted every report made from 5 a.m. on Thursday until 5 a.m. on Friday to demonstrate the amount and variety of calls police dealt with.
It comes a week before the British government announces spending cuts to address a record peacetime budget deficit, which could lead police forces to have to make savings of up to 25 percent.
The GMP’s tweets ranged from someone calling police to say there was a rat in their house and a cat could be responsible, a woman reporting a man who shouted “you’re gorgeous” at her, to serious incidents such as injuries to a child and a motorway pile-up.
Officers arrested 341 people and 126 were still in custody.
Follow 24 hours of tweets from @gmp24_1
“The reaction we have received proves that the public perception of modern day policing was removed from the reality that my officers face,” said GMP Chief Constable Peter Fahy.
“We have tried to give a serious message about transparency and how we get that out to the public. As well as serious crimes, we deal with many social issues and other incidents that the public are quite surprised about.” Chief Fahy said the work of the police should not be judged purely on crime statistics or how well they performed against criteria set by central government.
“I think that it’s time to start measuring performance in a different way,” he said. “There needs to be more focus on how the public sector as a whole is working together to tackle society’s issues and problems.”
The full list of calls can be seen on the force’s website www.GMP.police.uk
