BlueLine, the new law enforcement social media network created by former New York City and Los Angeles police chief Bill Bratton, is being touted as a site where officers can share their expertise, insight, and information securely through video, instant messaging, videoconferencing, and screen share capabilities, reports the Associated Press. The network is on track to go live at the International Association of Police Chiefs’ annual conference in Philadelphia next month.
Bratton cites the longstanding belief that federal, state, and local agencies work closely together, especially since the Sept. 11 attacks. That’s not entirely true, he said, saying he hopes BlueLine will help bridge the gap. “This is a big void that needed to be filled,” Bratton said. Bratton said BlueLine was conceived this year by his New York-based venture capitalist-backed startup, Bratton Technologies, after discussion for years that fellow officers didn’t have a safe network to share information with each other. BlueLine is being beta-tested among 100 officers within the Los Angeles Police and L.A. County Sheriff’s departments and the University of Southern California’s campus police. While initial reports compared BlueLine to Facebook, the company says it will more closely resemble business-oriented sites like LinkedIn. BlueLine will also allow companies who sell products geared for law enforcement to market to the more than 17,000 agencies the network hopes to lure.