Quoted in England on Police Suicides

Well, I've made the international news as I've been quoted in Police Magazine, the magazine for the Police Federation of England and Wales. The article for the January 2007 issue, A Quiet Killer," looks at police suicides in different countries and the reasons behind such tragedies. www.polfed.org/page16_17_quiet_killer_90107.pdff.pdf




I've been to London and found their brand of law enforcement to be interesting. While decidedly not gun oriented as American law enforcers are, British bobbies have a bit in common with their Yankee counterparts across "the pond." Unfortunately, in this case the commonality is police suicides.

Florida Deputy Sheriff Weathers Tornadoe

Just when you think you might have a rough shift, take a look at the damage to this Volusia County, FL, Sheriff's Office patrol car. The recent tornadoes that tore through Central Florida, missing my home, did a real number on Volusia County (North of us and Orlando) and Lake County.



The Volusia County deputy sheriff in the Crown Victoria was pummeled by mud and debris and rode out the storm in his car. After the tornadoe passed, he got out of his car and started to direct traffic. Now there's dedication for you. I salute this deputy and his colleagues who rose to the occasion to help their community recover from a storm that claimed 21 lives.

Check out my Slide Show!

Sheriff Greg Solano...A Great Blog from Santa Fe County, New Mexico

Here's a great blog that I've been following closely. http://sheriffgregsolano.blogspot.com/ Greg Solano, the Sheriff of Santa Fe County in Santa Fe, New Mexico, writes entertaining and informative missives from my old stomping grounds as a patrol deputy II. with that busy agency's Patrol Division.

I've been able to keep up with developments concerning my old agency such as the latest blog on Benjie Montano, the Sheriff when I was out there, who was named deputy chief of the Santa Fe Police Department. http://sheriffgregsolano.blogspot.com/2007/02/benjie-montano-joins-city-police-as.html

But it's more than the interesting updates on the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office and my friends. Sheriff Solano personifies the modern law enforcement executive who recognizes the need to use the media (in it's various forms) to reach out to the community. I encourage you to read his dispatches from the Wild West.

Expanded Reach

Here's something I found interesting today which reinforces my reasoning that embracing the Internet as a communications tools breaks the normal societal boundaries and expands the communications reach potential (beyond that offered by traditional media such national and local TV news). It's a different approach than that offered by traditional such as the CNN Headline News interview I did pictured in this blog post.

My police writings certainly have reached different populations within the law enforcement community, but the Internet has pushed those missives onto the reading eyeballs of people from other walks of life that find a commonality within the message.

The example I sumbled on to day concerns a section reprint of "The absence of a police marketing mentality,"one of my "Police and the Press" columns for PoliceOne.com, on the "Out of Site: Other Web Resources Recommended by our Staff" Blog section of Advertising Age (http://adage.com (http://adage.com/outofsite/index.php?start=65§ion_id=310). Advertising Age is a well-known marketing and advertising publication for Madison Avenue and beyond...

"Police Academy Needs Marketing 101

I didn't know it should be part of the "to serve and protect" policy, but police
just don't market themselves very well. PoliceOne.com has an essay all about it
under "Police and The Press."

Word-of-mouth may be a hard concept to
worry about when you carry a gun, but Richard B. Weinblatt thinks it should be
hard-wired into cops' brains: "With a police marketing mentality, the positive
stories on policing and those hardworking men and women who serve should vastly
outnumber the crime driven and negative, department scandal driven items. We
would finally keep pace with and perhaps surpass the fictionalized version of
policing embedded in society's psyche. Only then would the true nature of law
enforcement's service to the community be known and believed by the public."

Suddenly the war on drugs seems much more win-able by comparison.

Posted by Brooke Capps on 11.20.06 @ 04:31 PM 0 comments"

So now we have advertising gurus contemplating the marketing of the police. The power of the Internet...it's amazing.

OK, I did it...

OK, I did it...I've created an online blog at Blogger.com. If my five-year-old son, Michael, can fly around the computer playing his pre-K games, then Daddy (pictured here with Michael during this past summer- 2006) has no excuse not to be on top of the world's new fangled communications conduits.

It is clear to me that movement into other Internet venues (such as Blogger.com, youtube, flickr.com) are the wave and I guess I've now caught the wave. If presidential hopefuls, such as the very impressive and diplomatically gifted New Mexico Governor (and former U.S. Congressman and Energy Secretary) Bill Richardson, can have a presence on all of these powerhouse websites, I reckon I should too.

With this blog on blogger.com, now I am truly in the Internet communications swing of things. I have long strived to be an artful communicator. Now, in the 21st Century, it seems to be that media beyond that the traditional mold are an integral part of the communications process. My forays onto the Internet can't, and won't be limited to my website (www.policearticles.com) or my www.myspace.com page. This is the first leap into the Blogosphere.