The Sheriff of Queen Anne’s County is very proactive in using the world of social media to communicate to the public while using its networking power to generate leads for pending cases. With that effort having proven successful, it was time to make their website an additional tool in their arsenal.

The new website has a lot of features, many of which we custom built to work in our platform of choice, WordPress. I will highlight those features and show a few images but I encourage you to visit the site itself to see all it has to offer. Because of the names and information involved on their site, I’m hesitant to post too many images as these images won’t be updated in keeping with their website updates. You’ll note that I have blurred out names and photos of individuals in these screenshots, for that reason.

Home page:

Perhaps the most complex part of the website was building the database and infrastructure for the “Most Wanted” section. This section presents information on individuals who are wanted for a variety of reasons. We needed to create an interface for the staff at the sheriff’s office to keep that information up to date, as well as give the website visitor a way to view and sort through that information. We supplied a number of filters to allow users to sort or narrow down the database. I’m not going to show you a screen shot of that page as it contains photos and names of many individuals but you can visit that page on your own to see how it works.

The Sheriff’s Office also issues frequent press releases so we included a Press Release section so that those press releases could be posted directly on the website. They also have a list of email subscribers who wish to receive those press releases. To accommodate this, we built a custom subscription system to manage those email subscribers. There are two lists; Press Release Subscribers and Emergency Alert Subscribers. The Sheriff’s Office can filter both lists by zip code and by residential or business subscribers and then export those lists to be sure that their email is going to the appropriate audience.

We also created an Emergency Alert bar at the top of the page which appears whenever they issue an emergency alert (it is otherwise hidden):

There are several other ways that the Sheriff’s Office can communicate with the public through the website including:

• A Notices/Sheriff’s Sales page
• Photo Galleries
• Video
• Events Calendar

Here is an image of the Events Calendar:

This website is a perfect example of how one’s website can really become a tool. Leverage the power of WordPress and some custom code writing, we were able to create a site that will help keep the community safer and put criminals behind bars.

Visit queenannessheriff.org