It's true, the LA Police Department have started their first blog.  (Found via Ed Cone on eWeek.) They say they aim to have all 19 precincts blogging soon.  Typepad, moderated comments, using Feedburner but haven't put the new feed in their header tags for autodetection and capture of all subscribers (just like almost everyone else!) and no e-mail subscription to new posts - so easy with Feedburner and a good idea for a nontechnical audience as I'm sure this blog will have.

Reminds me of the NYPD podcast, now available in English and Spanish!  When that one first started you could almost picture some aging cops sidling up to a microphone, trying to take it very seriously but also not entirely clear what was going on.

All of this raises the question - if these new social media are about conversation, typically unfiltered - can a centralized, authority-based organization like a police department really make much of these tools?  If they can, is there any type of organization out there that just should not be blogging or podcasting?