Rome is notorious for its maddening traffic and for the inventive tactics motorists adopt to get around parking laws, but life is getting harder for rule breakers in the Italian capital - thanks to Twitter.
In late December, newly appointed City Police Commander Raffaele Clemente asked citizens to use the micro-blogging website to flag illegally parked cars and other violations.
The initiative has been a success, the Rome edition of the La Republica newspaper wrote, with Clemente having received nearly 3,700 Tweets that resulted in almost 1,000 on-the-spot checks and 588 traffic fines.
Clemente checks up on the progress in regular Twitter postings: On Tuesday, he noted that 71 cars were fined and 16 were towed away in the Mussolini-built southern neighbourhood of EUR.
The commander also uses his Twitter profile to debate traffic and public decorum issues with his followers, which currently stands at more than 4,600.
His initiative has divided opinion.
Roma Fa Schifo (Rome is disgusting), an online protest group that has long campaigned for authorities to adopt a tougher law enforcement approach, has applauded the commander.
Opposition politicians and Ospol, a police trade union, are up in arms, arguing that citizens are unfairly being asked to do the job of public officials, and claiming that denouncing traffic violations through social media breaches privacy laws.
