While the Gardaí haven't quite jumped on the bandwagon yet, we can only presume they won't be long in following the example of the West Midlands Police. 

The West Midlands Police tend to be pretty good on the whole social media thing. They have Twitter and Facebook, heck they even upload their stupidest 999 calls to SoundCloud for us all to enjoy, but today they became the first police service to join Snapchat. 

They revelaed the news on their website, where Keiley Gartland, from the Corporate Communications Department, said that the move was about "connecting with younger people and helping them to feel they have a close connection with their local police force. What we want is for them to have the confidence to give us a call or speak to their neighbourhood bobby when they really need our help".

Snapchat has been steadily growing in popularity in the last few years, and added video messaging a short while ago which has seen it become an even bigger force in the world of social media, with an audience that is generally quite young, so the move makes sense for the West Midlands coppers. They did add that social media should not be used to report crimes, your best bet is to stick to good old 999 on the telephone but they forget to underline that it should also not be used to send n00dz. We're sure at least one poor person in the admin department will be sifting though a fair bit of filth on a daily basis, as that's what Snapchat is all about, right?

We're not sure if the Gardaí have any plans to join up just yet, but we're looking forward to it, given they're adept with the use of telephone-based technology already.