The Daily Post had an interesting article over the weekend about Palo Alto doing what it calls a "virtual ride-along".  They describe it as

Last night from 5 pm to 1 am, a public information officer hopped into the front seat alongside a patrol officer and live-tweeted all of their calls for service, an event  the department dubbed a virtual ride-along.  The tweets were posted on the police department's official Twitter account, @PaloAltoPolice.

Interested residents asked questions during the ride-along by including the hashtag "PAPDvra" or mentioning the police department's account.

I think this is a great idea.  I did a ride-along with the B'game PD back in 2006 and wrote up my impressions of the night for the Voice.  Here is a small excerpt of that story

My immediate impression was that our cops really know the town’s habits and many of its inhabitants.  Our first call was a mere 10 minutes into my shift.  It would be the easier of two meth-induced problems we would deal with that night.  This contact was the third one with the same individual in less than 24 hours and highlighted to me the need for a little tougher stance at the Psych ward of Peninsula hospital.  The revolving door needs to slow down a bit.  The second meth-driven incident was worse. Later on a fire truck had to get a man off the roof of a commercial building and then an ambulance took him to the County hospital.  He was an expensive problem for the taxpayers.

It was an education for me and I think having BPD do a Tweet-along (a better name than virtual ride-along) would allow more people to get a taste of what goes on in town.  It's sort of a curated, modern version of listening to a police scanner!  And it costs nothing!