Facebook adds crime fighting application

Police to use site to solve crimes

21 April 2008 11:41 GMT / By Katie Scott

Facebook is being used by police in Greater Manchester to help fight crime.

The force has teamed up with the social networking site by creating a new application that Facebookers can install.

The application gives users access to a newsfeed and links to the Greater Manchester force's website and a crime-reporting form, where they can submit information relating to a crime.

It is hoped that the new application will raise awareness of local incidents and encourage people to come forward with information relating to local crimes.

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 raising awareness of incidents taking place within our local communities in a bid to gain more intelligence and bring offenders to justice", he added.

More than 300 people have already added the application.

Full tags

Software, Online, Facebook