Promptly at 3 p.m. Friday, the first of the promised tweets from the Evanston Police Department’s “tweet-along“ popped up on computer screens all over Evanston.
“Go time,” it said. “We have 11 beat cars and 2 full patrol cars out on duty.”
Then five minutes later: “Traffic stop on the 2200 block of Lee Street.”
Later calls dealt with a dead squirrel on the path to Jenks Park, an harrassing phone call, a drunk on Chicago Avenue, and a missing person report from Ridge Avenue
Doing the tweeting was Adelita Hernandez (in photo above), the city’s citizens engagement coordinator, who sat in the 9-1-1 Center as the calls came in. The Center also has someone sitting at the police desk and another at the fire desk, whose job is to relay calls to police and fire dispatchers, as necessary.
From her desk, Hernandez can see all the monitors, enabling her to tweet the information to the public.
The tweet-along will continue until 11 p.m. Friday. The exercise is seen by the EPD as an educational opportunity for the community to get an understanding of the quantity and nature of the calls received by the 9-1-1 Center.
Whether you have a Twitter account or not, you can follow the tweets on the City of Evanston website.