The program is called "Tweets-by-beat" and it calls for local citizens to tweet at the police department in the event of suspicious activity. While the new program is clearly not a replacement for 9-1-1 in cases of emergencies, it does give civic minded citizens a place to make police aware of perhaps a noise disturbance, a suspicious individual in the neighborhood, or a publicly intoxicated person making a scene.
The twitter account is monitored by officers who decide which tweets require attention.
Over the past 10 years police departments have begun to employ full time internet police charged with tracking down all types of illegal cyber activity... In addition, at the federal level cyber crimes fall under the jurisdiction of the Secret Service... they are yet to set up a twitter account.