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Say farewell to bpdnews.com, one of the nation's first police info sites
By adamg on Tue, 07/18/2023 - 9:41pm
Screen capture via Wayback Machine.
BPD News, up since at least 2006 with a URL that was splashed on every Boston police cruiser, is no more. The city today switched on police.boston.gov, which is all mobile-friendly and stuff and which de-emphasizes arrest reports, BOLOs and crime stats in favor of a more 21st-century feeling series of pages about the department itself. Don't worry, the old BPDnews news is still there, but you'll have to click to get to it.
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Comments
de-emphasizes arrest reports,
Tells you all you need to know.
What’s in a URL
Years ago, when they started using “bpdnews.com” rather than an official City of Boston URL, I was a little surprised, but I figured it was a political statement about the actual or wannabe independence of their fiefdom from the authority and oversight of the city government.
Maybe ...
But remember, those were the days when we had a mayor who banned voice mail in City Hall, insisted on calling the system by which residents could report issues to the city the Mayor's Hotline instead of 311 and oversaw the setup of a city Web site called cityofboston.com, rather than boston.gov.
So when a forward-looking BPD deputy superintendent (well, I think a captain at the time) who'd been playing with the idea of his own personal blog came up with the idea of a police blog, there might not have even been a way for him to use the city domain. In fact, bpdnews.com was originally set up on an ISP with its own blogging software, just like ol' UHub here (I know this because back then I occasionally went out for a beer with him and some other local bloggers and we'd talk about world domination, well, setting up some sort of formal Boston blog network).
About 311
I don't think you could reach the Mayor's Hotline by dialing 311 until after Menino retired -- it was some generic City Hall phone number that directed to a call center.
But I think that was also a branding decision on Menino's part -- to associate the hotline service being offered with the Mayor -- with the idea that he was involved somehow in making sure your services would be delivered. Of course there's a risk if you call and don't get the result you want.
As for why it was bpdnews.com -- probably more of a control thing. I don't think BPD wanted to give up control of its public-facing presence on the Web to City Hall IT.
About cityofboston.com
The city originally used www.ci.boston.us and was the Internet's first city city website. The city switched to cityofboston.com because someone offered them use of the domain. Then the city switched to cityofboston.gov after the US GSA made dotgov domains available to municipalities instead of just the federal government. Then came the switch to boston.gov.
The city never really had a choice between cityofboston.com and boston.gov in that timeline.
Will they continue update
Will they continue update with "Investigation Updates" and "BPD in the Community" and "BPD Community Alerts"?
https://www.facebook.com/BostonPoliceDepartment
Yes
If you're at police.boston.gov, scroll down until you get to "BPDnews Feed" and click.
Or, bookmark this link.
It's the same exact thing as the main part of the old BPD News, only now with extra mobile goodness, and now a click away from the police home page, instead of right on that home page.
Old school
BPD News when it was actually, like, an active blog, could be a great read. I remember one blogger in particular had an excellent dry sense of humor that was perfect for the medium.
You'd think a video of the
You'd think a video of the suspect's car that killed a child should be within a few clicks from the Boston City Police website, but I can't find it.