Macomb County Sheriff’s site wins NACO award
Accolade is Web site’s fourth national award since Nov. 2001
Thanks to the Macomb County Sheriff’s Department’s Web site, keeping informed on local crime, safety tips and current events is only a click away.
The site — located at www.macombsheriff.com — is not only serving the community, but serving it well. Since the current site design went online in Nov. 2001, it has garnered several national awards — namely, the Golden Web Award, the Police Guide Award for Excellence and the Law Enforcement Internet Directory Outstanding Site Award.
In early July, the site added another accolade to its growing list: a National Association of Counties Achievement Award.
Joseph Hansen, a research assistant at the Washington D.C.-based NACO, said 781 county sites from 31 states applied, but only 487 received the award this year.
Winning sites met one or more of NACO’s Achievement Award criteria, which included offering a new service to county residents, enhancing citizen participation or understanding of government programs, and improving the administration or enhancing the cost effectiveness of an existing county government program.
“The [Macomb Sheriff’s] site just has a lot of information on it that’s used by the public make them more informed about what’s going on in the county as far as police protection,” said Hansen.
The NACO award is “proof that it’s one of the most comprehensive law enforcement Web sites out there,” Macomb County Sheriff Mark Hackel said of the site, which contains more than 600 pages of content. “It has everything that you would expect a law enforcement Web site to have.”
It features a variety of useful information, including safety tips, news articles, pictures of the county’s most wanted criminals, information on voting issues, press releases, ways to commend outstanding officers and more.
Visitors can even send e-mail to the Sheriff’s Department and report drug activity, abandoned cars and other criminal offenses in their neighborhoods via the site.
According to the Sheriff’s Department, the site draws more than 300,000 hits each month from visitors worldwide.
Clinton Township-based company RunningWolf designed and maintains the site. With many current and former law enforcement officers on staff, RunningWolf specializes mainly in law enforcement and pro-second amendment Web sites, said Pat Richard, the company’s owner and senior designer.
“We’re quite thrilled,” said Richard. “We don’t set out to win an award, but we’re glad that people are taking notice of some of our work.
“We work very hard with the Sheriff’s Department to keep the information current and get it online in a timely manner,” he added.
Richard said Hackel wanted the Department to become more “technologically advanced” and spurred the site’s development soon after his election as Macomb County Sheriff. A temporary site went up in spring 2001 before being replaced by the current design in the fall.
Richard noted that the Sheriff’s Department had “done a great job of publicizing the Web site” by placing its address on law enforcement vehicles, letterhead and business cards.
“[Hackel’s] doing an excellent job at making people aware,” said Richard. “The site answers a lot of questions that people would typically call the Sheriff’s Department for before.”
For more information, visit RunningWolf’s site at www.runningwolf.com and the National Association of Counties site at www.naco.org.
You can reach Cortney Dueweke at
cdueweke@candgnews.com