You expect many things from a local police department, but you probably don’t expect them to release an app for your phone.
In October 2014, the St. Petersburg Police department released the St. Petersburg Police app on the iTunes and Google Play stores.
The app is free with several notable and entertaining features.
It contains catalog system for your property. This may not sound very glamorous, but it is quite useful. The app provides the framework to create a catalog of your valuable items. Users can add an item with a name, description, serial number and photo. That way, if the item is stolen, there is a greater chance of it being recovered and returned.
Another interesting feature of the app is the “most wanted” and “unsolved” tabs. In the unsolved tab, users are asked to identify people in various crimes throughout the city. It includes the crime’s description and any photographic evidence of it. The other tab “most wanted” is just that, it’s a list of the most wanted people in St. Petersburg with their mugshots and descriptions.
I find both of these sections extremely entertaining simply to see what crimes are being committed in our city.
The last tab that I found practical use out of was the directory. As the name suggests, this tab acts as a directory of phone numbers for specific departments within the police force, and while you may not ever need the phone number of the forgery crimes division, it’s nice to know that you have the number.
Overall this app is a solid first step into the era of smartphones and the selfie. It is a clever way that the police department is trying to reach out to its community and crowd source#things that used to only be able to be done on the evening news. So if you live in St. Petersburg, or are just interested in the weird crimes of Florida, I would definitely recommend this app.
