Devon and Cornwall Police take 1,300 calls during tweetathon

Police handled more than 1,300 calls during a 12-hour period shared in real-time updates on social media.

Reports included 60 teenagers causing problems in Teignmouth, a knife threat in Kingsbridge, a death in Totnes and a dog stabbed in Barnstaple.

The calls, to Devon and Cornwall Police, resulted in nearly 800 incident logs being started, officers said.

The tweetathon also highlighted the "volume and variety of demand" of calls for help, they added.

The campaign shared incidents reported to the police control room on the service's emergency 999 and non-emergency 101 numbers from 15:00 BST on Friday until 03:00 on Saturday.

Members of the public were able to keep up to date with what was happening on Twitter by following @DC_Police and the hashtag #ControlRoomLIVE.

The force held a similar event in February when hundreds of incidents were shared.

After the latest sharing, officers said the calls "resulted in us creating 794 incidents we've shared to highlight our volume and variety of demand".

They added that they hope people following the updates "found it interesting".

A large number of the calls were so-called pocket calls.

Anyone who accidentally phoned the emergency services should remain on the line rather than hanging up, letting the operator know they were alright, the force said.

The tweetathon came after the force received more than 34,800 calls to 999 in June - an increase of 19% compared to June 2022, it said.

In addition it received about 44,000 non-emergency calls in June 2023, it added.

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