From the pacific northwest

The Seattle Police Department's west precinct paid us a visit yesterday. They didn't actually come to Lincoln in person, rather, they participated in our 1430 roll call remotely, via web conference. Capt. Steve Brown, Officer Anthony Gadke, and Lt. Jim Fitzgerald joined in.

Second shift lineup included some information about two recent commercial burglaries, and the arrest of two suspects in some high-dollar thefts of racing equipment and tools. We discussed a Wednesday arrest of a frequent flier for carrying a concealed .380 pistol with the serial number ground off, the latest information about our favorite escaped suspect, and a series of organized thefts occurring at Sprint stores in the Omaha and Kansas City area--in the event the larcenous team visits our city.

Seattle hooked up (along with our Narcotics Unit, Northeast Team, and Center Team) via web conferencing from gotomeeting.com, so that everyone is looking at the same content, either on a 50" plasma monitor or with an LCD projector at all of our work sites simultaneously. Capt. Brown had read an article about this a couple of months ago, which piqued their interest.

This is about the tenth time we've had another police department join our meeting. A group from the Council Bluffs Police were the most recent visitors prior to Seattle. It seems that by actually participating, other departments quickly understand the utility of using computer content to improve the information flow during the ubiquitous roll call briefing. It's a pretty simple idea, but police agencies often adopt new ideas rather slowly. We're a little more agile than most. Maybe that's one of the reasons Lincoln was just named the top digital city by the Center for Digital Government.