WARRNAMBOOL police are delighted with the response to their Eyewatch Facebook page but they are in the process of educating their new following.
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Warrnambool police station commander Senior Sergeant Deon Townsend-Booth said the Eyewatch Warrnambool police service area Facebook page had attracted enormous public interest.
He said there were now about 10 officers trained to monitor the page.
A story about a missing girl on Tuesday attracted particular attention when the missing girl posted derogatory comments about police.
That led to the police post eventually being taken down.
Other posts have named and shamed people and led to police issuing warnings.
Senior Sergeant Townsend-Booth said officers were monitoring the page.
“It’s gone pretty well so far. We’ve banned one person for a totally inappropriate comment,” he said.
“We’ve been getting a lot of messages and it’s not designed as a personal messaging service.
“We’ve had people asking about crossing the solid white lines in the city to turn into parking bays.”
Warrnambool highway patrol officers are now going to post information about those laws.
“We are new to it and if people are going to express negative opinions we can add no posts,” Senior Sergeant Townsend-Booth said.
“We’re getting a lot of advice from members of the public. I wasn’t on Facebook until last Tuesday so we’re all learning.”
The senior police officer about 2200 people had joined the page in the past week.
”It’s been a great take-up. We’ve been fairly professional and we want to make sure that this is a positive page.”
Senior Sergeant Booth said warrant Wednesday also created a lot of interest with the names and pictures of four people published.
“I think we’ve got 60 odd outstanding warrants,” he said.
“This is a tool to let those people know there is a warrant out for their arrest. It’s not about shaming people.”