Police enter blogosphere

By Mary Carey
Staff Writer

Published on November 02, 2007

Make way, citizen journalists, mommy bloggers and cat bloggers, the Amherst Police Department has joined the blogosphere.

Recent posts at the department's new blog, at amherstpd.blogspot.com, apprise readers that a Level 3 sex offender has registered in Amherst, a suspect has been arrested in an Oct.. 25 break-in and the University of Massachusetts would be closed on Thursday until 11 a.m. due to a bomb scare.

There are photographs of the recent Pedal with the Police night, video coverage of a program for seniors and the beginnings of a lively exchange between police and blog readers in the comment sections.

Readers learn in an Aug. 24 post that an alleged thief "dropped his wallet in all the excitement," during a recent break-in.

"He'll be arrested soon," adds the police blogger.

Town Meeting member Gavin Andresen is already a devoted reader.

"It puts more of a human face on the police department. You can actually see their point of view on things, which you don't get a lot of times," said Andresen, who has two blogs of his own.

In the comment section following the break-ins post, Andresen writes, "This is exactly the kind of information I was hoping to see in the Amherst PD blog!"

E-policing

A new trend in community policing, "e-policing" aims to provide timely alerts and give people a sense of what police do, as well as solicit public feedback and information, says Amherst Police Chief Charles Scherpa.

Scherpa also hopes it could be a cost-saving measure, as blogging has the potential to extend the department's reach and deepen its relationship with the community without additional personnel.

"We're trying to e-police, because the money is disappearing and crime is alive and active," Scherpa said.

Officer Brian Matuszko is the technical go-to person in the department and will likely be involved in day-to-day blog operations in the near future. For now, though, Lt. Jennifer Gundersen is blogger-in-chief.

Some police officers, including her, were already avid readers of local blogs and Internet site forums, because they are interested in what is important to the community, Gundersen said.

"We thought, "Hey, let's give us some place that we own to tell people what our priorities are, where messages (from readers) could come directly to us.'...We think that every day, dozens of times a day, we do something that the community should know about."

Police are accustomed to sending press releases to the local media, but the stories the police pitch don't always see the light of day, Gundersen said.

"The problem we find is we're competing with other aspects of government, other organizations that want their information in the news. We understand there is just so much space. We want never-ending space," she said.

Gundersen thinks residents might be more comfortable entering comments on a blog than sending the police an email or calling them.

Down the road, Gundersen foresees that police could establish "e-police sectors," with different officers assigned to blog on their own geographical areas, alerting residents to traffic issues or a rash of break-ins, for example.

Other police bloggers

Amherst appears to be among the first police departments in the state to start a blog. Neither Northampton nor Easthampton has one yet, although they have both updated their Web sites lately.

Boston and Brookline police departments both have their own blogs, at BPDNews.com and blog.Brooklinepolice.com, respectively.

Officer Sharon Dottin, who works in the Boston department's Media Relations office, is the blogger in Boston. When people call with questions, she often refers them to the blog. "Anyone can read it and look for information on things that are going on in their neighborhood," she said.

While her department does not track how many hits it gets on any given day, as far as Dottin knows, the Los Angeles Police Department gets from 1,000 to 1,500 hits per day at LAPDblog.org. It may be the most ambitious police blog in the blogosphere.

Lt. Ruben De La Torre started it in May 2006 at the request of LAPD Chief William Bratton.

"It's been nothing but positive," De La Torre said.

The LAPD blog contains an impressive assortment of information, from descriptions of crimes the department is investigating to opinion pieces by officers alleging the local media got a police-related story wrong. A "Flickr badge" displays a rotating assortment of photographs. There are podcasts and videos.

Sometimes, the LAPD will get 40 or 50 comments on a blogpost, an impressive number by most measures, as in May, when police were criticized after clearing reporters out of a park during a demonstration.

De La Torre writes a synopsis of what the commenters say every week and sends it to his boss, who sends it to Bratton. "That way the chief knows what's going on in the community," De La Torre said.

De La Torre thinks blogging could be even more effective in a small community like Amherst than it has been in Los Angeles. His advice to Amherst police is that "they should not be afraid of two-way conversation. They should embrace it. One of the things we're trying to do is be more transparent, and the blog gives us another avenue to let people know our human side and see some of the things we are doing.

"There is much potential to it," De La Torre said. "It's only limited by our imagination."