David Riker, president and chief operating officer of Bratton Technologies, kept hearing one thing from all levels of law enforcement: "Our biggest issue is that we can’t find each other. We don’t have the tools we need to collaborate."

To address this, the Bratton Technologies team recently unveiled a new professional network exclusively for law enforcement: BlueLine Connect.

The heart of BlueLine Connect is collaboration, so it takes the concept of what it means to connect online a step further by acting as a multifaceted communications platform. For example, members can not only create personal profiles and custom groups — standard for many of today’s social networking sites — but they can also video conference with each other in a Google Hangout-like setting that allows up to 12 participants.

Riker, however, is quick to correct the assertion that their product is a social media platform. "Social media is about community engagement, whereas BlueLine is a professional network. It's the evolution of professional media," he said.

BlueLine Connect also aims to lend a helping hand to "the little guy," because the law enforcement landscape is historically unbalanced and fragmented. The unfortunate result of this fragmentation is smaller departments not having the access they should to the best industry tools and resources available. BlueLine's goal is to bridge this gap for those limited agencies by facilitating new networking and collaboration opportunities.

In addition, privacy has been — and continues to be — a cornerstone in the website's development. Riker says this is because collaboration in the law enforcement community can only occur in a secure environment, and this is especially true online.

"Safety and security are critical components of our strategy. So we've implemented CJIS-level standards across the board — from authentication and verification to hosting information," Riker said.

BlueLine users will experience this high level of privacy control on their own profiles, as they will have ability to customize who can contact them, as well as who can view each of their individual updates and posts.

For now, only recognized, current members of an official law enforcement department can join the site. But that could change down the road with allowed connections for special types of users and groups. In fact, according to Riker, there is no shortage of ideas on how BlueLine may evolve. Some concepts the Bratton team are currently considering include an app store, data and analytics tools, and group buying for industry platform promotions.

Only time will tell which of these ideas will come to pass, but here is what is certain: The introduction and continued development of BlueLine Connect has far-reaching implications in terms of how law enforcement agencies will work together to achieve results — and it's off to a running start. Within 48 hours of BlueLine’s launch at this year’s International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Philadelphia, the network had 1,300 registered users. And the numbers continue to climb.

"BlueLine is the culmination of a vision of community-based policing and collaboration," says Riker. "And the world is about collaboration today. You can try to hide from it or fight it, but collaboration is critical to creating a force multiplier."