Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Public safety bloggers

There are a lot of sites out their that aggregate links to blogging police chiefs, public safety directors, fire chiefs, cops and firefighters. There is a new one, however, that I like. It's from the International Association of Chiefs of Police, of which I am a lifetime member for the past several years. They award you lifetime membership after you've paid dues for 20 years--theorizing, I suspect, that you're not going to burden the budget for much longer anyway.

IACPnet has a nice feed of a few prolific police/public safety bloggers. I'm enjoying seeing what my peers like Kansas City Police Chief Darryl Forte, Madison Police Chief Michael Koval, Duluth Police Chief Gordon Ramsay, and Auburn Hills Public Safety Director Doreen Olko are thinking about. So might you.

Back in 2007, when I launched the Chief's Corner (now the Director's Desk), you could count police chief bloggers on one hand, and have a few digits left over. My inspiration at the time was Manny Diaz, Mayor of Miami. So here we are, in the eighth year, 1,290 posts and  nearly 15,000 reader comments down the road, still going strong after a burst of wee-hour productivity last week.

Though readership isn't quite what it used to be, Twitter has pretty much taken over the field, and writer's block has become my nemesis, I continue to enjoy blogging as a way of getting my unfiltered ideas and opinions in front a few thousand loyal followers every month.

As I always say, sometimes I even bore myself.




7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't sell yourself short. Without your blog, the local birdcage liner would have to find another source for a third of their local stories.

Anonymous said...

Director,
Now that I have an internet connection again I usually enjoy my first cup of coffee while reading your blog.

Things sure have changed since I was a kid on the farm in the 1950s. Way back in the day our "Internet" was the old rural party line. Instead of Blogging eveyone listened in on the party line. And we are concerned about PRIVACY now? Makes me chuckle.

Gun Nut

Steve said...

I no longer visit the LJS online site, as it is virtually impossible to read anything there anymore, thanks to all the pop-up ads and their crappy web site. Also, the comments there are predominantly from liberal whackos. I am thankful for your blog, Tom. Yes, occasionally, it's a little dull, but at least it is fair, logical, and well-written (we all make a typo now and then). I have no idea how many comments you choose to block, but I think you allow dissenting opinions frequently as long as they are civil. Keep up the good work.

Anonymous said...

Off topic but can you answer why officers are not wearing body cams? They are pretty inexpensive and with all the publicity that is happening all over the country, I would think this would help protect officers from many false accusations.

Anonymous said...

Off topic but can you answer why officers are not wearing body cams? They are pretty inexpensive and with all the publicity that is happening all over the country, I would think this would help protect officers from many false accusations.

Older'n dirt said...

Off the subject, but we seem to be seeing a big increase in car=bike accidents, especially in rural areas. Any thoughts about this?

Tom Casady said...

9:31,

Sorry for the slow response, but your comment got lost in my queue.

The cost of cameras, though considerable, is not the biggest impediment. Rather, it's the cost of managing the video. The logistics are huge: time every day for each officer to download and tag recordings, giant storage needs for hours upon hours of video, staff for redacting, copying, archiving, responding to subpoenas, public records requests, and so forth.

If it was as simple as buying a camera and handing it to an officer, it would be a no-brainer. We've been through this with in-car video in policing, and it's a big, big deal. I think some departments that are leaping into body-worn video are biting off way more than they will be able to chew, and some may be heading for a melt-down. On the other hand, I think the technology is improving, and will soon be much more approachable. Improvements with automated downloading and tagging, better back-end storage solutions are on the horizon.

Right now, I think you'd have to be willing to commit on average an additional 15 minutes of every officer's time to managing video, and for a department of Lincoln's size, have at least one FTE who does nothing but.