Uneasy Rhetoric

A few weeks ago, several Sacramento bloggers, including me, pointed out that the Sacramento Police Department had a blog. Unfortunately, this “forum for two-way communication between the Sacramento Police Department and the community it serves” isn’t doing much communication. The last post was almost a whole month ago, on September 25th.

That’s too bad. I think that such a forum could be very useful, and I’m forced to make up reasons for why it isn’t more active.

It could be because they were never going to take it seriously in the first place. It could be because there was only one staff person assigned to be a “blogger” and that person either 1) is doing it on her own free time or 2) has to go through such a gargantuan vetting process that it will take a month just to get one post out the door.

Easy solution: empower more PD employees, sworn officers and otherwise, to be bloggers, and streamline the vetting/approval process.

The SacPD blog isn’t a personal blog. If I want to go a month without posting anything, who cares? But if they’re serious about using the internet as a way to reach out to the broader community (and maybe especially to those of us who try to pay attention to what’s going on), they need more frequent posting. More posting will generate greater participation.

There has been one comment and response on the “Ask Officer Michelle” section. The commenter basically expressed the sentiment in my title and Officer Michelle offered a reasonable and detailed response.