The
Baltimore County Police Department announced this week that it is now providing
a weekly online news resource, including a crime blotter, for each of its 10
precincts.
The
precinct officers supply content for the pages, including a summary of crimes
listed on their weekly significant crimes reports.
The
precinct web pages will not be used to provide breaking news alerts, but each
page includes precinct-level contact information.
Department
officials said that communities accustomed to receiving local crime information
from precinct captains through email distribution lists will continue to receive
communication from those officers.
Elise
Armacost, director of media and communications for Baltimore County Public
Safety, said the new pages were not a direct response to the brief controversy
surrounding the weekly emailed crime reports that have been sent to residents
from the Towson precinct for several years.
"The
issue of precinct-level news is something we've been looking at for months
because we know people want this information," Armacost
said.
"The
goal is not to make every precinct a carbon copy of the other," she said. "Each
precinct is different, each captain is different and they will be providing the
content. ... There's going to be variation in pages. … But at minimum, we want
to provide weekly crime blotter information to every
precinct.
"As
it is, some of our residents are getting that. In Towson they were, but there
are residents of other precincts that were not getting it," Armacost said. "By
making this information available on our website, we're making it available to
many, many more people than it has been."
The
pages also include a "news you can use" section about upcoming police events,
crime prevention tips, police fund raisers, planned road closures and
accomplishments by local precinct officers.
