With this number of followers, the Policía Nacional has consolidated itself as the second-most popular Spanish public institution on Twitter, second only to the official account of the Spanish Government, @desdelamoncloa.
Hundreds of police forces around the world use this means of communication to inform and communicate with citizens. The account of the Spanish National Police has the third-largest following of all police forces in the world, after the US FBI and the police force of Chile.
The Policía Nacional is a pioneer in the use of social networks for communicating with citizens and responding to their queries, questions and requests for assistance. Today, the @policia account is one of the few verified accounts.
The Social Networks Unit manages the various accounts and profiles run by the Policía Nacional on the internet in order to provide a public security service to Internet users in Spanish. The main reasons for the success of this channel are: the public service provided to resolve questions and queries; the citizen security advice; the technological alerts and publication of basic security measures related to using technology and browsing the Internet; the citizen collaboration platform via which the public has been mobilised to combat crime; the launch of campaigns to raise awareness associated with security and providing useful information; and police-related news.
Extensive interaction and collaboration from Internet users
The Policía Nacional responds in private (via direct messages sent on Twitter) to questions asked by tweeters and, wherever appropriate, forwards the information on to the corresponding department (Technological Investigation Unit, 091 Emergency Room, Drug and Organised Crime Squad, Spanish Citizen Documentation Unit, the various provincial Police Headquarters, etc.).
Some of the campaigns and activities undertaken by the Policía Nacional on Twitter include: the publication of Internet security and privacy advice; citizen security campaigns for specific periods such as Christmas; alerts on possible fraud; reminders containing useful information on International Internet and Security Days; the #veranoseguro ("safe summer") prevention campaign; a campaign for the victims of domestic abuse to report such crimes; and a twitter meeting with the Technological Investigation Unit.
Other campaigns that also received considerable social support included those that involve requesting the public to re-tweet certain messages or collaborate in other ways, campaigns related to the fight against child pornography, the search for clues aimed at locating wanted criminals and the most recent campaign to confidentially provide the Central Drug Squad with any information on drug trafficking activities. The officers forming this last unit received 700 e-mails for their investigations related to the fight against drug trafficking.
Besides sending about fifty questions or queries to the Press Office on a daily basis, tweeters have demonstrated considerable solidarity with this profile and the Policía Nacional through messages of congratulations or support in such difficult times as those recently seen with the #heroesOrzan, when the number of messages of support, condolence and re-tweets far exceeded 10,000.
The Policía Nacional has another Twitter account in English (@SpanishPolice) for relations with foreign communication professionals and police forces around the world.
A pioneering and benchmark entity in the use of social networks
The Policía Nacional is one of the pioneering entities in Spain and the rest of the world in the use of Twitter for providing information to the public and still has its initial account (@policianacional) from March 2009. Since that time, the name of the account has been amended to the more accessible @policia and is one of the few accounts to have been verified by the social network as authentic.
In recent months, the number of users on this information network has grown noticeably, and the information and security advice issued by the Policía Nacional has received an excellent response.
The figure of 100,000 followers is even more outstanding when you consider the follower/followed or followers/number of tweets ratios.
The Policía Nacional is not a follower of any other Twitter profile.
However, it responds (and replies when appropriate) to every message, mention, question or query from its followers. In the vast majority of cases, that response or information is sent to the recipient via a private message and, whenever considered to be of general interest, it is sent via a public tweet.