Not everything that happens in a neighborhood will automatically pop up in 140 characters or fewer. Sex crimes were excluded, on the theory that Web attention could discourage people from reporting a rape or sexual assault, and domestic violence cases will remain off the Twitter list as well for similar reasons. Drawing attention to a private matter and alerting neighbors, department officials said, could make things worse for the victim.

The reports are also structured with an automatic one-hour delay, aimed at preventing people from learning about an investigation in progress and swarming over to gawk and perhaps interfere.

“This is trailblazing stuff,” said Eugene O’Donnell, a professor of police studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. “It shows a willingness I haven’t seen in large supply to really affirmatively make available, warts and all, a clear picture to people of what’s going on.”

But Professor O’Donnell, a former New York City police officer and prosecutor, said he thought there could be unintended consequences. Increased awareness of local crime, he said, could lead people to a greater feeling of vulnerability or to the conclusion that the police are not resolving the local crime problem — even if it is a problem they might not have been aware of had the beat-tweet not informed them.

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The Seattle police have reasons to want to appear forthcoming. The department is in the middle of an internal overhaul as well as a court-directed settlement with federal prosecutors prompted by investigations that found a pattern of misconduct, including excessive force and ethnic and racial insensitivity. The Twitter program is one of 20 initiatives in 20 months announced this year by Mayor Mike McGinn — specifically No. 17, to “provide better information to the public.”

But will residents really want the minutiae of daily police life popping up on their smartphones or other devices? Police officials are not sure, but they say that if it lifts the veil even a bit about what they do, it could lead to more understanding of the rhythms — and sometimes the tedium — of their work.

Consider the “accident investigation” at 35th Avenue Southwest and Southwest Barton Street reported at 4:01 p.m. last Wednesday. Sounds as if it could be pretty dramatic, right? Officer Scott Luckie, a four-year veteran with the department, thought so, too. The radio dispatcher said a bicyclist and a car were involved, with possible injuries. So he responded with lights and siren, only to find a man sitting on the curb, unhurt, his bicycle undamaged, more angry than anything else, that a driver had cut him off on a corner.

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“I was scared to death,” the bicyclist said.

He and the other responding officers milled around a bit, made sure the bike and biker were O.K., and drove away.

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“A slow day is a good day — it means people aren’t out being stupid,” Officer Luckie said, back behind the wheel.

Critics who track social media trends say an automated community bulletin board like Seattle’s will certainly be fast and cost-effective. But a system run by computers also has the drawback of, well, being run by computers.

If a person responds to a local beat post, say, asking about an incident, or volunteering that he might have important information about a crime, the reply might well be missed. The automated posting system will not be regularly monitored, a spokesman for the department said, because there are so many beats.

The department’s main Twitter site, though, is run by real people, and feedback there about the project has ranged from the enthusiastic to the head-scratching. A resident asked: Who’s doing the posts? Robots, the department responded. Well, not really. “Technically, our computer dispatch system, but robots sounds more exciting,” the department’s reply said.

One follower of the new beats, John Eddy, said he liked the truncated computer-speak of some of the posts. “ ‘Urinating in pub’ is my favorite so far,” he wrote on his own Twitter account.

One law enforcement media expert, Capt. Mike Parker, who oversees the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s sprawling public communications system, said he thought the deeper impact of Seattle’s program could be the message it sends to other police agencies, which he said are in many cases timid or uncertain about how to use the new social media tools.

“It gives confidence to other police leaders as well that it’s O.K. to do that,” he said.

Twitter itself, meanwhile, was suspicious of the idea. The project was delayed for several weeks after Twitter closed down 18 of the Police Department’s new accounts. Lots of new Twitter addresses popping up all at once apparently raised red flags that a spammer might be setting up shop. The crime beat feeds were thus delayed... to prevent a potential crime.