The field of law enforcement web sites just got a bit larger. Indulge me for a moment while I try and convince you that this one is worth your while.
If police work is your chosen trade and you've kept up with the magazines and web sites devoted to it, you've probably run across my work before. I wrote mostly technology articles for law enforcement trade magazines during and after my law enforcement career. A couple of years back, I took a job as the full-time editor of a law enforcement web site, which I thought was pretty cool, since I knew of only one other person that had such a job at the time. As it turned out, it was pretty cool. I can't think of a better job other than actually being a cop, which we all know (or will discover) is the coolest job ever.
So, if it was so cool, why didn't I stay there ("there" being where I used to work)?
And before you lose yours, this will be the last time I use "cool" in this column.
I moved on because opportunity came calling, and I knew there was a lot more to be done with this medium. Elsevier, my employer and the owner of LawOfficer.com and Law Officer magazine, has the resources and the vision to gather more information, training and talent than any law enforcement portal you've ever seen or heard of.
In a remarkably brief span of time, Law Officer has become a valued and respected magazine for police officers. The writing and photography is excellent, and that volume of work is the foundation and standard for LawOfficer.com. We are loading the archive of past issues onto the web as quickly as we can, and eventually you will be able to pull up any article that has appeared (or will appear) in the magazine. Thus, Law Officer's writers become our writers, too. But LawOfficer.com isn't just an electronic version of the print magazine.
We have already recruited a stable of subject matter experts to write regular columns on topics ranging from tactics to crime analysis. News stories will be updated at least every day, and throughout the day as events unfold. The stories won't be just words–we have video from multiple sources. Have you heard about the new book, True Blue: To Protect and To Serve? We'll be posting one chapter per week until it's done, well over a year from now. We would still like you to buy a copy, since it goes to benefit the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund, and you can do that from here, too.
LawOfficer.com is a participative environment. Most articles have a "Comments" feature so you can provide your feedback and get a response from the author. We're asking for your hard-earned knowledge and experience through the "Tips and Tricks" page. Let us know about the loss of a brother or sister through "In Memoriam," or add your own reflections on how they lived. By the way, that doesn't apply to just "active duty sworn." We know that it's not just the people with badges that make up the police community, and we want to recognize the non-sworn and retired folks, too. And we will eventually have a discussion forum for everything that doesn't fall neatly into one of the categories above.
We'll be adding more features and resources as we go along, but we need you to tell us what you want and need. You can post a comment, send an e-mail, or do whatever else you need to do to let us know.
Be safe and be well.