Portland Police Bureau: Start Blogging
The Portland Police Bureau obviously has some community relations issues. For the most part, it seems the general public (and definitely the blogging community) would love to know what the hell is going on with questionable in-custody deaths, racial profiling issues, and a lack of two-way public communication on a variety of issues. Here’s one fairly simple thing that could be done: blog.
I’d like to see a police department blog. Not just a list of press releases, but an actual blog, written by a human, with comments enabled, and two-way discussion going on. Portland’s mayor has a blog, their water bureau has a blog, and at least one city commissioner is a commenter here on this site, so the concept of blogging shouldn’t be a foreign one to the city’s leadership.
The Los Angeles Police Department has had a blog for some time now that features information about incidents, opinions, crime statistics and more. Modeling the PPB blog after the Los Angeles one would be a great start.
How about it? Mr. Potter and Ms. Sizer… here’s a great opportunity to open up. I will personally offer help from a technical standpoint if needed - my contact info is in my author profile.
Related posts:
I’d settle for the Portland Police Association opening a blog called Robert King’s House of Wingnuttery.
I’d settle for better training in crisis intervention first.
For those interested, the contact page for the Portland Police Bureau is here:
http://www.portlandonline.com/police/index.cfm?c=30539
And you can email the Chief too:
chiefsizer@portlandpolice.org
And like your mom always told you, you catch more flies with honey, so don’t call names, but if enough people suggest this in a reasonable fashion, maybe it could actually happen.
Hoping against hope,
-The BLF
PS: I’d also like a “police blotter” section so when those sirens wail by in the middle of the night I can find out later where they went and what went down.
There’s a great City of Portland run site for North Portlanders to interact with their community police officers called the Back Fence. There I read about activities in my neighborhood, drug busts, neighbors ask questions, and our community police officer interacts with us. Drug houses have been shut down due to the interaction the site provides, but that’s because it’s for two-sided interaction, not just “community relations.” Coming at it from some sort of defensive posture as you’re posing would work against that.
Wow, I posted a comment this morning to this and either you opted not to post it, or you deleted it. You wouldn’t actually do that, would you?!
Lelo, your comment somehow got caught for moderation. I was without internet access all afternoon and just saw (and approved it). We don’t delete comments around here (except spam), so if something disappears its probably a technical glitch or human error, not malice.