Greater Manchester Police tweets sparking interest Published duration 14 October 2010

image caption The tweets have been uploaded on to Twitter and the force's website

Call 686 "Man shouts 'you're gorgeous' to a woman".

Call 674 "Confused man reports his TV is not working".

These are just some of the hundreds of calls Greater Manchester Police has received from members of the public since it started "tweeting" about them at 0500 BST.

The force has set up a 24-hour Twitter feed so every call it receives can be made public.

It has received about 2,000 emergency calls varying from a robbery in Salford to cows loose in Atherton.

The calls about serious incidents, such as robbery, assault, rape and threats to kill have been interspersed with people asking the police to do things far from their job requirements.

They have been asked to break into a man's house because he is locked out, help a woman who wants to sue the benefits agency because she has no money and find a woman's car after she left it at a petrol station.

The Twitter feed has caught the interest of members of the public - 12,000 people were following it on the social networking site at one point.

Many have left tweets praising the constant updates saying it "makes fascinating reading".

SaddleworthSal posted: "It's addictive. Congratulations to you all. Well deserved twit award informing the public."

'Gimmick value'

Another user, APlender, called for Manchester's "criminal fraternity" to start "rival tweeting".

"It'd be Social Media's The Wire," he said.

Others have been slightly more cynical about the Twitter project.

Iainmhepburn posted: "Fascinating though the GMP tweet exercise is, I'm struggling to see anything other than gimmick value to it."

image caption Chief Constable Peter Fahy wants to show members of the public what they do on a daily basis

For Chief Constable Peter Fahy the Twitter feed is anything but a gimmick.

With spending cuts on the horizon and fears he could lose 3,100 members of staff, Mr Fahy wants to show the government exactly what his force copes with on a daily basis.

The feed has revealed the extremely varied nature of emergency calls the force receives.

One minute someone is calling about a baby being dangled over a bridge - although later it turns out that it was a dog.

Shortly afterwards, the force receives another 999 call about fireworks being set off in a local park.

Then another call is received about a missing mother and son, and at the same time another operator is taking down details of a missing person who has been found.

Another tweet from a member of the public congratulates the police on the finding the missing woman, then a second later there's a robbery in Salford to attend to.