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See: http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/business/industries/computers_and_internet/3111793.htm (Text is below) The downtown police precinct in Minneapolis hosts a two-way e-mail list for communication related crime prevention. While I am aware of various one-way e-mail alert networks in my fair city <http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/citywork/police/ccp-safe/emaillist.html> the two-way downtown list is a prime example of how the Internet can be used to involve people in directly dealing with public concerns. The other "government as online communication host" for the implementation of public policy goals that I feel is extremely important is the Community Builder site/web forum/e-list. It is hosted by the state government of New South Wales in Australia <http://www.communitybuilders.nsw.gov.au/>. You can get a sense of their 800+ person exchange related to community development directly at <http://www.communitybuilders.nsw.gov.au/forum/list.php?f=3>. Including such topics as "Public Toilets and their Future" <http://www.communitybuilders.nsw.gov.au/forum/read.php?f=3&i=594&t=594>. First we had reality-based television, now reality-based e-democracy. :-) It is my belief that we need a grid for civic/inter-governmental information exchange that works from the local level on up. If we do not build the framework for information exchange forums that deal with more mundane public services, we will never have the foundation required for larger, often national or international policy issue online deliberation. With the globalization of so many policy issues that directly impact local and national policy options, the initial tendency is to first create more global online civil society forums. These global information exchange places will have limited impact as long as there is no grass roots framework for local information exchange on related topics. The cross-flow of relevant e-mail posts between many-to-many local, national, and global forums with provide a powerful multiplier effect. So for example, back to crime, if you want a global agreement on say drug crimes to be effective, you need lots of local crime prevention forums that can be consulted online for input on the global policy framework. The participants in each local online exchange are represented by somebody in traditional political power structures (i.e. they are voters) while purely global forums are not viewed by anyone with legitimate power as something they must take notice based on some sense that they risk political ramifications in their district. If public officials, including national leaders had a sense that what they were doing on a global stage might generate positive or negative buzz across local forums in their country, perhaps impact the next election, they will both take such online forums seriously and attempt to engage them to assist their political goals. That will then open up the opportunity to use online information exchange and discussions in efforts to not just promote accountability and set the public agenda, but also to help improve the outcomes of the public policy process. Steven Clift Democracies Online http://www.e-democracy.org/do From: http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/business/industries/computers_and_internet/3111793.htm (I have included the full article for educational purposes because I am not sure whether this site keeps articles at the same URL for more than a week - they didn't before their recent redesign.) Posted on Mon, Apr. 22, 2002 Cyber-Crimestoppers More than an electronic bullhorn, e-mail has given Minneapolis police an interactive, effective means to combat downtown crime. BY LESLIE BROOKS SUZUKAMO Pioneer Press Police departments around the country often turn to high-tech crime-fighting tools costing small fortunes. But in Minneapolis, two police workers say they've found a smarter and cheaper anti-crime technology. It's called e-mail. Electronic mail is hardly cutting-edge in the computer sense. In downtown Minneapolis, though, officer Craig Williams and civilian crime-prevention staffer Luther Krueger are using it in ways that are cutting-edge as public-safety measures, experts believe. In what is being dubbed a "virtual block club," police and about 430 other people with downtown connections are able to exchange messages as part of a communal crime-fighting effort. Membership in the virtual block club is free. Creating it cost police nothing. They simply did what thousands of gardening groups, computer clubs, sports enthusiasts and politics junkies have already done they started an e-mail group. The group, also known as a mailing list or listserv, allows police to communicate with the managers and owners of downtown office buildings, bars, restaurants and parking ramps. What's more, any group member can communicate with all members because messages sent to a communal e-mail address are automatically transmitted to every subscriber. This is humdrum stuff in the technology world, but it's an electrifying innovation in a part of Minneapolis where traditional block clubs and crime watches wouldn't work. About 167,000 people flow into downtown every morning, but they leave just as quickly around 5 p.m. This means community meetings would likely see sparse attendance. But with e-mail as an alternate community builder, police have direct or indirect access to thousands of downtown cubicle denizens. As a result, they rarely need to print crime-alert flyers or send faxes anymore. "With (the e-mail group), we can allow people on their own time to get caught up with what's going on," Williams says. Minneapolis isn't new to e-mail as a community service. It began using it in 1996 to send out crime alerts, as St. Paul police and other departments now do. But most only use e-mail as a high-tech bullhorn to blast out one-way messages. By contrast, Minneapolis police have fostered interactivity with their e-mail group. In addition to swapping e-mails, members can visit a communal Web site at groups.yahoo.com/group/MPD-DTC that offers more community-building options. They can see an archive of past messages, respond to any of them, e-mail list organizers or other members directly, read traffic bulletins concerning construction of downtown's light-rail transit line, even view weekly maps showing locations of serious crimes. "I think it's awesome," says Nicholas Luciano, vice president of Hannon Security Services, which provide security for several downtown buildings. Luciano used the group recently to track a rash of plant thefts from his buildings. A plant rustler was wandering into building lobbies, distracting security guards, then walking out with expensive decorative plants. When news of one of the thefts got posted on the list, suddenly security personnel from other buildings downtown chimed in, noting similar descriptions for the suspect and motus operandi. "You could almost follow the guy down the skyway. People were saying things like, 'We just checked him out of my building,' " Luciano says. "It works that quick." Police went interactive in 2000 to prepare for a controversial genetics conference that attracted animal-rights protestors that summer. Members of the Minneapolis Building Owners and Managers Association suggested the move after seeing their counterparts in Seattle use a similar e-mail group to communicate during the World Trade Organization riots in 1999, says Kent Warden, Minneapolis BOMA executive director. Minneapolis police kept their group alive and tweaked it. Since it got into full swing in June 2000, serious crimes have dropped dramatically at some locations due, in part, to improved e-mail communication, Krueger says. After police began sending downtown bars weekly summaries of their own police calls, the establishments began minding their business better, he says. Calls related to assaults and other disturbances dropped by 12 percent at some bars between 2000 and 2001, he notes. Parking ramps, also supplied with weekly incident reports, experienced dramatic decreases in serious crimes last year. The private summaries showed exact locations of most incidents isolated rooftops, in many cases allowing ramp owners to alert their own security, Krueger says. Even petty-theft reports from office towers, restaurants and other locales dropped by 21 percent from 2000 to 2001, he says. The crime drops can't be attributed entirely to e-mail, he acknowledges. Police stepped up code enforcements at the bars, for instance, and conducted office-tower walk-throughs at roughly the same time. But the e-mail group taps a wellspring of neighborhood knowledge that might otherwise fly under police radar. "What it does is allow us to say, 'We're having a problem with this guy. Are you?' And someone else says, 'We are too,' " says Scott Hrouda, building supervisor for the Northstar Center on Marquette Avenue. "And that's when Luther's ears prick up and he asks us, 'Who is this guy?' " The National Crime Prevention Council knows of only a handful of departments using e-mail, but none with the interactive capabilities of the Minneapolis e-mail group. Most are like the PolicEmail listserv in Clearwater, Fla., a city of 120,000 people. Police started its e-mail group last month for nearly 100 neighborhoods, including downtown. The group has several hundred members. When receiving e-mails from police, members can click "reply" to send a message back to the department. But they can't post their own messages for other members to see, a capability the agency says it likes. "That's not a bad idea," says deputy chief Dewey Williams, the department's Webmaster. "It would work on a smaller scale." The Minneapolis e-mail group is "a phenomenal development," says Steven Clift, a Minneapolis-based online strategist who maintains political and community-building listservs such as Minnesota E-Democracy (www.e-democracy.org). Astounded to learn that Minneapolis police allow group members to interact, he says, "I am not aware of any police department that allows (e-mail-group) members to talk to each other. It's a bold move." "They're talking many to many," Clift says. "That's much more powerful than talking individually." No such program exists in St. Paul, police spokesman Michael Jordan says. While St. Paul sends out automated e-mails related to public services such as snow-emergency notices, it has no two-way e-mail groups, says Rebecca Stenberg, project manager for the Parks and Recreation Department and a member of a citywide committee that works on e-government initiatives. Minneapolis police recently expanded its e-mail group to include residential Loring Park and Elliot Park near downtown, but it has no immediate plans for such a program in other neighborhoods. E-mail groups might not work well in neighborhoods without the saturation e-mail coverage of a downtown, and they would likely wither in lower-crime neighborhoods, the department says. So far, the downtown e-mail group seems to serve police and others equally. "It feels like we're more connected to people," Williams says. "And they get what they want: They get answers to their questions." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reach Leslie Brooks Suzukamo at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or (651) 228-5475. *** Please send submissions to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** To subscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** *** Message body: SUB DO-WIRE *** *** To unsubscribe instead, write: UNSUB DO-WIRE *** *** Please forward this post to others and encourage *** *** them to subscribe to the free DO-WIRE service. ***
