A Message from Sheriff Al Lamberti
The Broward Sheriff’s Office has always strived to stay a step ahead of the curve when it comes to communicating with the public. Creative and forward thinking is crucial during this new digital age of communication. There is no doubt that our website www.sheriff.org is a valuable tool in providing the public with important information. Recently, we added two new features to the site. The first is Community Events, which not only lists all of the upcoming events the Broward Sheriff’s Office is hosting, it also provides mapping to the location of the event. The second new and advanced feature is our BSO mobile application (app), which we created for smart phone and tablet users. The BSO mobile app provides users with a one-touch approach to search arrests, civil cases, news, report a crime, view and map our events, contact the agency and connect to our social media sites.
By researching the most important and valuable areas of interest to our website visitors, we were able to develop this one-touch approach to connect with our agency. We are proud to say that we are one of the first public safety agencies to launch such a progressive mobile app. The new BSO app can be downloaded by visiting www.sheriff.org/mobile/ or clicking on the new mobile app button located in the top right-hand corner of our website. Once prompted, add the BSO app to your home screen. In a matter of seconds, you will have access to some of the most important information we provide.
There is no secret that social media is an emerging trend. While there are many social media outlets, Facebook is by far the leader. With more than 500 million users worldwide and more than 150 million users in the United States alone, that means half of all Americans are Facebook users. To put this trend into perspective, it took 90 years for the home telephone to become conventional and only five years for Facebook to become mainstream. Most interestingly, the largest increase in demographics for Facebook is users who are 55 and older.
Another popular site for communicating is Twitter. This interactive form of social media allows you to use a minimal amount of characters for messages (also known as tweets), but is commonly used to provide information in “real time”. It also allows users to interact and forward on “tweets” to their contacts as they are posted.
I realize that social media and mobile apps like ours are useful in communicating important safety information. I am a firm believer that the more informed you are, the safer you are. That is why we utilize these and other tools such as my E-Newsletter and our CyberVisor program, which is an advisory e-mail and text system that provides residents and business owners with vital information about:
If you have not signed up for our CyberVisor program or E-Newsletter, I encourage you to visit www.sheriff.org/cybervisor to sign up today. You can also follow us on Facebook at Broward Sheriff’s Office (Official) and Twitter @browardsheriff. As always, you can e-mail me at Ask_The_Sheriff.org.
I look forward to hearing your feedback on our new and improved communication efforts. Stay safe!