How could a neighborhood use Twitter for crime/safety alerts and prevention?

Greg G: How could a neighborhood use Twitter for crime/safety alerts and prevention?
Looking for specific examples on how neighbors could use a service like Twitter to improve safety/security? For example, send a Tweet if a suspicious person is spotted along with location, etc. Other examples?
Well, since learning that only one person can tweet into a Twitter feed, I guess Twitter is out of the question for this application. If anyone knows of a service that would allow *everyone* on the distribution to contribute, please let us know about it! Thanks!!

Answers and Views:

Answer by JaysonPerman.com
setup a twitter account for the neighborhood. Get the neighborhood to follow the account. The only problem is that only one person would be able to post (person who owns the account).

Answer by Scott
I am wondering the same thing. We are looking for a better way to alert neighbors of criminal activity in the neighborhood than our current phone tree system.
On a slightly different note, have you discovered nixle.com? you can get alerts from the police dept in a timely manor.