You own your website. It doesn’t go out of business. You control its newsfeed. You don’t compete with cat videos. Take it seriously.
The world is digital. It is governed by algorithms and populated by doomscrollers. But it’s also changing. Social media has changed more in the past 2 years than in the past 20.
(And don’t forget to do the math, folks. Twenty years brings us to 2005, not 1985!)
Social Media Doesn’t Last FOrever
Twitter/X is fading. Facebook is actually Meta which is to say its also Instagram, but there’s also Threads (not really). And lest you forget that the entire Meta thing is a push to get people to use virtual reality, which we haven’t even seen hit its stride yet.
It’s exciting and scary. The 2020s feel so much more like the 1990s than the 2000s or 2010s from a tech standpoint. That’s a good thing. It means we can do more as public information officers and public safety agencies. It’s also a cautionary tale that those who are over-reliant on a single product or social network, produced by a single fragile for-profit corporation, are at increased risk of falling behind. After all, we’ve had 20 years of utter dominance — duopoly — from Facebook and Twitter in the public safety/PIO landscape.
There is one venerable tool of the past 30 years that can’t be forgotten. It’s a tool that you control yourself, that never goes out of style or out of business, and one that you can configure to rule all of your other tools: Your own .com or .gov agency website that is separate from the vast and verbose website of your city or town government.
Information Flows Fast, Don’t Help Others bUry Your News
In today’s environment, where information is consumed rapidly and trust in government is often tested, the structure and accessibility of your department’s communications platforms can have serious implications. For police and fire departments, communications infrastructure is just as important as evidence gathering and tactical training. Comms is not a secondary task — it is core to mission success. Yet, many departments still rely on a single page buried deep within a city or town website to tell their story. A deeply buried URL on the town site to reach the media, inform the public, recruit candidates, and provide time-sensitive emergency messaging.
It’s a broken, backward way to do public safety communications. It’s largely the result of massive national government website providers trying to cement their hold over local government IT infrastructure. It cedes control over public safety and emergency communications to nonemergency, and, in some cases, political officials.
Generally speaking, every community needs no fewer than five separate websites: School district, public library, police, fire and “town government” — the big one. They can all have a similar look, feel, design and color scheme if desired, but they should be separate domains.
Customize What You Can, Post What you Must
Recently at the 2025 IACP Public Information Officers Section Midyear Conference in Kansas City I was asked to give a training class discussing the fall of Twitter and the rise of Instagram, LinkedIn and short videos/reels for police departments. One of the points I continued to hammer home was this: Overworked PIOs can spend a little more time customizing their Instagram stories and building an audience there if they simply configure their department websites properly to save them time everywhere else. When done right, a department website can automatically publish news releases or blog content to Facebook pages, Facebook groups, LinkedIn pages, Nextdoor, and even Instagram posts (for breaking news, this is especially useful). A modern WordPress-powered website can also (for free) be configured to automatically and immediately email your news content to subscribers.
A proper agency website saves time and money and maintains separation from the municipal government.
Need more arguments for your bosses (or for yourself?) Here are 25 specific and actionable reasons why police and fire departments should invest in and operate their own independent websites.
1. Operational Autonomy
A standalone website allows departments to post updates, issue statements, and manage content in real time — without routing requests through city hall staff or municipal IT queues. Content can also be placed in draft form and circulated in-house, away from potential prying eyes. The DPW or Library director should not see what the police or fire department is doing (and vice versa btw…).
2. Real-Time Emergency Communication
When seconds count, residents and media need to find accurate, current information. Standalone sites give departments full control over emergency alerts, closures, public notices, and situational updates. YOURDEPARTMENT.gov not only looks better as a decal on a cruiser than: http://www.YOURTOWN.YOURCOMMUNITY.YOURSTATE.gov/DEPARTMENTS/PUBLIC-SAFETY/Police/Police.html, but it is also much easier to remember and give out to residents during an emergency.
3. Strategic SEO Visibility
Along the same train of thought, Google searches for “MY TOWN Police Department” or “MY TOWN Fire Department” should lead directly to your digital home — not to a multi-level municipal behemoth website that buries essential information.
The Boston Police Department used to have BPDNews.com, and during the Boston Marathon attacks in 2013, the department’s news blog and Twitter account became invaluable sources of trusted information and breaking news. Today, with two new mayors coming since 2013 and new political powers in the city, that website is gone. In order to find the exact same headlines that had been reliably posted to BPDNews.com, a resident will have to click around on the Boston.gov website to find the police page and eventually make their way to https://police.boston.gov/stories-in-the-news. This is a less efficient way to manage public communications. It’s not centralizing, it’s micromanaging communications.
4. Recruitment and Retention
Departments across the country are facing hiring crises. Dedicated websites allow for modern, compelling recruitment portals with video, testimonials, benefit details, and outreach to college students, high school students, women and minority applicants — all tailored to your department’s voice.
5. Dedicated Newsroom for Media Relations
A robust media relations effort requires a department comms infrastructure that provides quick access to news releases, press contacts, backgrounders, incident logs, and high-resolution (print quality) images — positioning your department as responsive and professional. The news media, like your residents, should be able to find your news in as few “clicks” as possible.
6. Crisis Management Preparedness
Websites function as virtual Joint Information Centers during critical incidents. Templates, live updates, FAQs and direct control improve public safety outcomes and coordination with other agencies.
7. Accountability and Transparency
Publishing use-of-force data, response times, call volumes, budget overviews, department policies, records request forms and commendation/complaint forms helps build community trust and reinforces your commitment to professional policing and fire service standards.
Burying these transparency items as subpages of a subpage of a government website has the opposite effect.
8. Custom User Experience for Residents
Your audience is not just the news media — it includes seniors, parents, commuters, business owners, teachers and school-age students. A standalone site allows you to tailor content and navigation to these groups.
9. Community Engagement and Education
Fire prevention campaigns, crime prevention programs, CERT training, citizen academies, car seat installation clinics — these programs deserve dedicated space with resources, registration, and event promotion.
Attendance is higher at these programs if folks have an easier time finding and registering.
10. Modern, Secure Architecture
Standalone platforms offer better integration with alerting tools, secure form submissions, accessibility (WCAG 2.1) compliance, and language translation features. Police and fire department websites are smaller than the “whole city” website, so you can deploy features like automatic accessibility overlays or translation software faster and with less red tape.
11. Personnel and Department Profiles
Showcase your command staff, community liaisons, veteran members, and specialized units. Highlighting human stories — and human faces and names — reinforces connection, credibility, and morale.
My favorite? Take a photo of an officer who delivered a baby at a local residence — take a picture of him or her during a reunion with that family member, holding that baby, and then post a second photo of the pink or blue stork decal (which you should buy) affixed to their cruiser. Your own website gives you a better, faster and easier place to tell these stories and more.
12. Training and Accreditation Promotion
Display ISO scores, POST certification updates, training milestones, and specialty team qualifications to reinforce professionalism and standards compliance. It’s faster and easier for your PIO to post a library of P’s and P’s to your own website than it is to wait for city I.T. to do it for you.
13. Digital Resilience in Crisis
Furthermore, a cloud-hosted site that is separate from city infrastructure offers faster recovery, uptime guarantees, and cyber mitigation benefits in the event of a natural disaster, attack, or technical failure.
And the cloud is where these websites belong. These websites are public-facing. They should not be used to process financial information (use your payment processing vendor for that infrastructure) and your website forms should not be collecting sensitive information like SSNs and driver’s license numbers. Everything on your website should be public and uninteresting for hackers to try to steal, and any decent web host should be backing up your website daily for a quick restore.
DO NOT host your website on a computer server located physically inside your station or building. There’s just no reason to take the risk of a security breach or attack affecting your facility. Host your website in the cloud, with a reputable provider.
14. Better Integration with Social Media
Your social posts should lead back to owned content. We refer to social media as “Rented Media” and news coverage as “Earned Media.” Social media is “rented” because it’s temporary. You are at the whim of an algorithm and a massive corporation’s moneymaking priorities.
Your standalone website enables campaigns that link directly to long-form stories, video, or resources, increasing trust and reach. You’re in control.
15. Calendar Control
Open houses, drills, hydrant flushing, and hiring deadlines should be easy to update and find. Residents shouldn’t have to navigate through a town events feed. Police and fire departments have enough going on to justify their calendar page.
16. Grant and Donation Visibility
Departments that fundraise or apply for grants benefit from displaying donor pages, impact reports, success stories, and eligibility content — all of which require more flexibility than a town-hosted page can offer.
17. Historical Preservation and Legacy
Police and fire departments are stewards of local history. Honor line-of-duty deaths, retirees, historic apparatus, museum pieces or department milestones with proper archival space. Your website has no limits on the number of pages or sections you decide to create.
18. Resident-Focused Resources
Create easy-to-navigate information portals for burn permits,. Advertise seasonal parking bans, and neighborhood patrols. Showcase community risk reduction tools or home safety checklists. You can also add automatic appointment booking software car seat installations, smoke alarm certificates, or firearms permitting.
19. Language and Cultural Accessibility
Standalone websites are smaller and more scalable than large municipal government websites. This makes them easier to incorporate multilingual tools, ADA accommodations, and inclusive visuals. This is critical in reaching all members of your population.
20. Regional and Mutual Aid Collaboration
Highlight partnerships with other departments, task forces, or regional dispatch centers. A dedicated site reinforces your leadership role in the larger public safety ecosystem.
21. Career Path Visibility
Today’s candidates want to see more than job listings. They want clarity on advancement, mentorship, specialty units, and diversity initiatives. Showcase them all on your website. Show your potential employees what makes your agency a desirable place to work — and to remain for many years.
22. Enhanced Public Safety Messaging During Non-Crisis Events
Not every public safety message is tied to an emergency. FEMA teaches public information officers about the 95/5 rule — 95% of public safety agency communications should not be related to an emergency. The vast majority of our content should be proactive, preventative and informative.
Educational campaigns about distracted driving, home heating safety, overdose prevention, or brush fire season require space, longevity, and visuals that a shared city page simply can’t provide. Standalone sites let you build seasonal campaigns with clarity and purpose.
23. Wellness and Family Resources
Offer a centralized space for mental health resources, peer support, EAP programs, physical fitness programs, chaplain services, and family engagement. This reinforces retention and department well-being.
24. Professional Branding and Identity
Your badge, mission and values deserve to live in a digital environment that reflects pride, tradition, and professionalism — not next to the trash collection schedule. (Which is also important!)
25. Future-Proofing Your Communication Strategy
The next generation of residents, business owners, voters and elected officials will expect seamless, direct communication. This is the standard that every police and fire department should build through its public information officer role.
Building and maintaining your own digital infrastructure prepares your department to take a leading role in telling its story. Relying on a single page on the city website and waiting for city staff to get around to making your updates doesn’t accomplish this mission.
Websites are Part of Your Public Safety Infrastructure. They are Not a Marketing Luxury.
The benefits of separate department websites go far beyond aesthetics or simple convenience — they represent operational readiness, build public trust, accept public input and criticism, enhance your readiness posture, improve recruitment strength, and help give agencies the ability to meet modern expectations.
Fire and police departments have entered a new communications era, but you should fall back on time-tested tools as well as new and emerging products.
Expectations for transparency, speed, and professionalism are higher than ever. Citizens now turn to the web before dialing the phone. Recruits want to research agencies before signing up to take a test. News reporters need official content in seconds, and they need to know who to contact with questions.
Residents want to feel safe, informed, and heard.
A dedicated website is not about ego, cosmetics or duplication of efforts; it is about elevating your agency’s voice and telling your department’s story. More than a communication tool, when done correctly, an agency website – like all public information efforts — is an extension of a chief’s command, leadership and mission.
Instagram is great. Reels and short videos are amazing engagement tools. But for Chiefs who want to modernize, your website is where the future begins.
JGPR does websites. See how we can transfer your website presence today!
The graphic accompanying this article was created with help from ChatGPT.