LAPD web site gets tons of traffic, but still sort of Web 1.0

According to Los Angeles Police Department Public Information director  Mary Grady, the LAPD's website gets more than 31,000,000 hits every month.

That's mondo traffic. Slap on a few banner ads, some Google AdSense, some flyovers, floaters, interstitials, a couple of credit card offers and a photo of the ubiquitous University of Phoenix--and ka-ching! That should easily be enough to cover the massive budget overruns on the new headquarters.

Earlier today, TechCrunch reported on the forward-thinking ways of the Greater Manchester Police, the first police force in the UK to build a Facebook application to allow community members to help report and keep track of crimes and missing persons. GMP also has a YouTube page in which they show things like anti-terrorism PSAs, footage from the 1996 Manchester bombing and montages of still photos and video of a murder victim whose attacker has not yet been located.

The LAPD's Grady said her site has "over 10,000" pages (she didn't seem to realize that this is not necessarily a feature), but she admitted that the department has not yet harnessed YouTube, Facebook or any of the other youth-centered media sites. 

"We definitely realize technology is something that's very beneficial and it reaches a wider audience," Grady said.  But in terms of YouTube/Facebook/social media, "We've looked at some things, but no final decisions." 

Grady cited an LAPD freeze on civilian hires, and a general resource crunch as reasons the department had not yet been able to build in these areas (lapd.org does, however, have surveillance footage, a blog, a nifty crime map and a (badly neglected) Flickr page).

Maybe when the headquarters gets finished the department will have more time to make YouTube videos and upload to Flickr.

"If I'm going to do it," Grady said of future improvements, "I'm going to do it well."

Comments

[Roger Daugherty]

You must be young and highly enamored of all things new on Internet.

If ever there's a web site that needs to NOT be intimidating, or challenging, or in anyway unfriendly, it's a public protection service such as LAPD. Would it be nice for the site to have a place for people like your self to go to do whatever it is you think is so damned important, I admit. But you need to become more aware of the basic functionality of the Internet, the utility of web sites, and the needs of their customers.