Police in the Western Isles shooed some sheep off the road at the weekend.
News of the call-out by Stornoway’s finest to the woolly jaywalkers was confirmed by Police Scotland to a worldwide audience as it fulfilled its promise to tweet every weekend call-out in the islands for an experiment in the use of social media. 
Although the 140-character limit did not allow too many details, it is understood the sheep were detained and locked up although they will not be among those baaad boys making an appearance at Stornoway Sheriff Court on Monday.
Since Friday until Sunday, island cops tweeted a note of virtually every alleged incident brought to their attention from the Butt of Lewis to the Isle of Barra.
“Police work comes first but we will tweet everything unless there is a reason not to,” a spokesman said. It was the first time such an event had happened in Scotland although individual English forces have carried out similar experiments.
We learned that a drink driver was detained after a car was checked in Stornoway and another driver was allegedly under the influence of drugs. Taxi drivers permits were checked and a few other drivers were also bagged to make the most of the weekend policing’s high profile.
One keen observer of the online activity who commented on the police feed was Dr Gary Mirams. He wondered what it would be like to be a policeman on a small Scottish island. Dr Mirams described it as his “back-up career”. Still, he seems to have done alright as he is currently a research fellow and lecturer at Pembroke College, Oxford University.
On Saturday afternoon, officers tweeted they were attending a car on its side at Kershader in South Lochs. Sadly, that turned out to be because the driver had apparently died at the wheel. The coastguard helicopter took the driver to hospital but nothing could be done.
The day before, an officer even managed a single Gaelic tweet, promising the occasional one in the future. Happily, it was spelt properly as island officers’ spelling online has been a recent issue. One island tweeter, sweenyness, recently claimed he had been blocked by @WislesPolice for pointing out their spelling mistakes once too often.
Reaction to the police tweetathon seemed to be generally positive from most Twitter users. One however, with the username @dwilson_88, was not so happy. He resorted to unparliamentary language to declare he was going to abandon his night out because @WIslesPolice were “on a mission this weekend!” Intriguingly, he used a hashtag #Nomorejailfoodforme.
And someone else thought it was all too quiet. A tweet, from @jaymac1b to @WIslesPolice told them off, saying: “you guys have a very easy job, either that or your not telling us everything 
lol!”
