Schaumburg's Twitter ride-along a success

Schaumburg police Sgt. John Nebl considers last Friday's Twitter ride-along with patrol Officer Ken Feeley to have been a success, and as representative of a typical day on the beat as he could have hoped for.

Nebl served as narrator and cameraman via the village of Schaumburg's Twitter account as Feeley went about all his normal duties.

Bad winter weather made the morning especially hectic, with many calls to respond to traffic accidents. Feeley attended to two himself.

"The morning was good in that it showed how busy it can be," Nebl said.

There were also traffic stops, including one in which Feeley let the driver off with a warning rather than issue a ticket.

Nebl said some of the feedback received after-the-fact was that Feeley should have issued a ticket. But public opinion is inevitably split either way on such decisions police officers must make every day, he added.

Things slowed down during the afternoon, which was a good opportunity to see Feeley practice community policing, Nebl said. This involved stopping to check in with business owners and others on his beat, centered along Golf Road between Salem and Roselle roads.

Nebl said the fine balance he was trying to achieve was to not overshare information while still keeping things interesting. He ultimately posted 28 tweets between 6:45 a.m. and 3:15 p.m.

Nebl will next tweet from the police academy on Friday, March 7 with the intention of showing a day there through the eyes of a new recruit.