Twittering To Get The Bad Guys Works

POW!!!*** KAZAAM #$%^^$$ SPLAT *&^%^&.

Those were the sounds of Batman and Robin tackling the bad guys way back when.

Now it's more tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet and one more tweet.

Police nationwide are using the microblogging to track down the bad guys, alert people and communities of crimes and potential danger. And they're sharing these insights with colleagues in the collective quest of fighting crime.

According to a news report from the Crime Report,  a "collaborative effort by the Center on Media, Crime and Justice, a top practice-oriented think tank on crime, and justice reporting at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Criminal Justice Journalists," the lone membership organization of crime-beat journalists, Twitter could be the next big crime tool next to database innovation, GPS tracking and DNA analysis.

Over 50 police forces nationwide are tweeting and also networking on big social sites such as Facebook. Baltimore's police department, for example, now has 4,000 followers according to the article by freelance writer Dena Levitz.

In her report, Levitz writes that "Jeanette Sutton, a sociology professor at the University of Colorado ... said that Twitter can be an essential surveillance tool to gauge public sentiment. Being able to see what (the public) is talking about, whether it’s a concern about a lack of resources or a perception of blame…(is) a source of information like we’ve never seen before.”

Amazing. An online social networking application that began as just a simple way of sharing the minute details of life is aiding and enhancing real-life issues such as fighting crime and keeping people safe.