I just returned from a community meeting tonight during which a sheriff of a growing county was asked by a resident angry about a particular scary arrest in her neighborhood: Are you on Facebook? Because that's where kids are, and that's where you can reach them, she said.
Answer: Well, we have a strong Web presence, you can find anything you want about us online, etc. But no Facebook.
Web 1.0 -- shoveling out lots of stuff to the world -- is not Web 2.0 -- engaging in dialogue, listening, collaborating.
But it turns out sheriff's offices across the country are in fact jumping into the social Web:
The sheriff of Jacksonville, Florida is on Facebook. From the Florida Times-Union:
The law enforcement agency is placing an increased emphasis on online recruiting, according to Sheriff's Office officials, and social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook have become valuable resources during a difficult fiscal period in which spending money on traditional advertising is hard to justify.
Sgt. Ty Dickinson transferred to the Sheriff's Office Recruiting Unit in September and was taken aback by the agency's lacking online presence. He knew social networking sites and online classified advertising provider Craigslist receive millions of hits daily, yet their services are offered free.
When he heard many of the teenagers at his church chatting about their online personas, he knew these sites were popular with his target recruitment demographic.
"We're always looking for more recruits in the 19- to 29-year-old age bracket, and these sites gave us the ability to speak directly to them," he said.
But then the reporter goes on to ask sheriff departments from the surrounding areas if they are doing the same thing. And they are not. And their reasons are, well, no reasons at all. They indicate that these law enforcement leaders are out of touch.
There is a high premium among these guys in understanding what the latest gang graffiti signifies. Learning to listen to your community through use of simple technology seems beyond the grasp of too many in law enforcement. Email use is growing, seemingly. That's good. But it's not enough. More on this soon. [Such as: Just how transparent can law enforcement afford to be, really? Especially when gangs are involved? Who out there is wrestling with these issues?]
Update: Good post here on how Twitter use could benefit local law enforcement.
CNN recently reported on this as well.
And here is a great post in response from law enforcement social media expert Christa Miller of Cops 2.0.
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