Residents urged to report illegal parking via Twitter

Rome traffic police are encouraging Twitter users to report illegal parking in the capital by taking photographs of the offending vehicles and tweeting the images to the police department's Twitter account.

Residents who wish to report illegally-parked vehicles can send their photographs to @PLRomaCapitale. The traffic police reply once action has been taken against the offenders, typically within a few hours.

The campaign was introduced in December and over the first month police received more than 1,100 complaints and responded to about 740, issuing hundreds of penalties in the process.

The head of the urban police force Raffaele Clemente says "Sharing, such as on social networks, is needed to fight certain patterns of illegality and rule-breaking, and also of crime."

For more details follow Polizia Roma Capitale on Twitter.