Government Technology - July 2008 - (Page 52)

public safety S TAT E | L O C A L | F E D E R A L Online Blues hile the security camera rolls, two police officers enter a convenience store where a robbery is in progress. The officers miss the shifty movements from the first man they see and fail to cover each other when they move in to arrest another man hiding in the back. Sensing an opportunity for a getaway, the first man pulls a gun from under his T-shirt and shoots the officers. Both robbers then run out the door. Cover your partner. Don’t ignore possible threats. This 10-year-old video conveys the message better than any training room slideshow could. BLUtube, a new online video sharing platform from San Francisco-based PoliceOne.com, is helping to ensure more messages are shared among the police officers who stand to learn from them. “It sounds horrific, but if you break it down step by step, it’s actually incredibly important that it’s there where officers can see it,” said Robert Dippell, PoliceOne’s online director. “There are a lot of videos that are useful as situational examples where something went drastically wrong.” Today the site is fostering a library of law enforcement-related videos, some for serious training and others, which are lighthearted, uploaded by a handful of especially active members. The result is a video site with a narrower focus than the most popular video sites. BLUtube saves officers from typing “police” into a video search box and wading through ’80s rock music videos and popular anti-police bits like the “Don’t Tase Me, Bro” video. Instead, BLUtube hosts traditional classroom training videos alongside dashboardcamera footage, crime-related local TV news segments, and reviews and promos for new Video By adapting Internet trends to its niche in public safety, PoliceOne builds a new community around online police video. j j Synopsis: PoliceOne.com launches BLUtube, a collection of training videos, dashboard-camera footage, crime-related TV news coverage, and new product information for the law enforcement community. Technology: Online video sharing platform. Contact: Robert Dippell, online director, PoliceOne. com, robert.dippell@ policeone.com. W JULY_08 products. PoliceOne also seeds the site with original content, while building a library of survivor stories and police narratives to serve its new video audience. “We try to see what’s going on in online technology and apply that to our market,” said PoliceOne CEO Alex Ford. “As YouTube launched and became the phenomenon that it was, I started to think about how we can apply that trend and match it with what law enforcement does on an everyday basis.” The law enforcement community is a particularly apt target for online video, Ford said, because of the wealth of footage available and the importance of video during training. “It’s been clear all along that law enforcement officers are very much visual learners, and video is an important component of their training,” Ford said. “Most incorporate video in their training presentations, and they show video at roll call.” Dippell said BLUtube development began about a month before the site went live in mid-October 2007. Working with a thirdparty company (that Dippell declined to name), PoliceOne developers were able to get the site running quickly. “The platform itself was pretty straightforward,” Dippell said. “The main thing was solidifying the sign-in functionality.” 52 B Y P AT R I C K M I C H E L S | C O N T R I B U T I N G W R I T E R http://PoliceOne.com http://policeone.com http://policeone.com http://PoliceOne.com http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - July 2008

Government Technology - July 2008 Point of View The Last Mile Big Picture On the Scene Four Questions for ... Generation 2.0 at Work Dangerous Convenience Tainted Justice? Are You Ready? E-Discovery Basics Smart Docs Advanced Math Online Video Blues Spectrum Personal Computing Products signal:noise

Government Technology - July 2008

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