You may know him as PC Ed Rogerson or as hotelalpha9 on Twitter, but either way he has a strong community presence.
PC Rogerson was one of the earliest Police Officers to adopt the Social Network website Twitter where he updates the general public on his work.
The group following him has now grown to over 1,800 – he uses his mobile phone to post Twitter updates throughout his working day.
We met with PC Rogerson and asked him about his work:
“It all started a couple of years ago when we had a graffiti problem in Harrogate”
“It wasn’t a big problem but a couple of tags kept appearing and we had a team meeting to discuss what we could do”
“They are difficult to catch unless you see them actually doing it”
“We came up with the idea of using facebook, twitter and youtube to load up pictures and videos as it was more likely to be seen by the peers of the people doing the graffiti – within a week we had two people arrested”
PC Rogerson explained how using social media websites integrates well with his Police work and that it provides that extra re-assurance that the Police are out there working for the public.
PC Rogerson added:
“I wanted to let people know I am there, even if people can’t see me, or we don’t pass on the street people can see that I am dealing with their issues.”
Although a useful tool that he does need to be cautious about the tweets he makes as he could easily give too much away or compromise an investigation.
You can see the PC Rogersons’s Twitter page here http://twitter.com/hotelalpha9
