 Facebook has millions of users in the UK and across the world |
Facebook users can now report crime in between uploading holiday photographs and throwing sheep at their friends. Officers in Greater Manchester have developed an application for the social networking site that allows users to submit intelligence about crimes. After installing it on their profile, users also get a news feed of incidents and links to the force website. Greater Manchester Police said (GMP) said it has been developed to raise awareness of local appeals. The force said it was the first in the country to take advantage of Facebook, which is the UK's most popular social networking site. Intelligence gained Assistant Chief Constable Rob Taylor said: "Greater Manchester Police is proud to be the first force in the country to use this new technology and it demonstrates our commitment to exploring all avenues available to us to help fight and detect crime. "Facebook has 59 million users, seven million of which live in the UK, so we realised that this was an excellent way of spreading our messages to people on a more personal basis. "This application allows Greater Manchester Police to further raise awareness of incidents taking place within our local communities in a bid to gain more intelligence and bring offenders to justice." Facebook, along with its main rivals Bebo and MySpace, lets users set up personal web pages and communicate with each other.
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