PhillyPolice Mobile: police department launches mobile web site

It used to be that you had to dial 9-1-1 if you wanted to talk with the Philadelphia Police Department from your mobile phone (or any phone, for that matter).

Now, as long as it’s not an actual emergency, you can use your phone to get in touch with the PDD using PhillyPolice Mobile, the new mobile web site the department launched last week.

“The overall goal is trying to make our services easy to use and bringing us closer to the people we serve,” PPD Director of Communications Karima Zedan said.

Zedan says that the mobile site will allow Philadelphians to do things like find out what district they’re in, report a tip, or find the closest police station if they’ve been in an automobile accident, more easily than if they were to navigate to the PPD’s regular web site on their phone.

The mobile homepage also features access to Philadelphia’s most wanted criminals, surveillance video, a contact directory, as well as the @PhillyPolice Twitter feed.

It’s being billed as another big step in a police department that launched it’s redesigned, open source-platform-based website, boasting it was one of the country ‘s best

Hyaline Creative, a local web development firm that has contracted with the PPD for their entire web strategy, developed the mobile site, Zedan told Technically Philly.

The PPD is trying out all sorts of new ways to reach Philadelphians using new media. Zedan says the PPD is currently training a crop of officers to use Twitter.

“We currently have an active officer in the Southwest detective division who is using Twitter right now,” Zedan said. “He has over 1000 followers in his community.”

As awareness about the mobile site grows, Zedan says the PPD will be watching to see how people use it compared to the web site.

“Our website gets 100,000 hits a month,” Zedan said. “I would love for people to start using our mobile site just as actively as they are from their computers.