PRESS RELEASE — Sheriff’s Office to provide more transparent information to County Residents

WARREN COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE

200 SKYLINE VISTA DRIVE · FRONT ROYAL, VIRGINIA 22630

Mark A. But­ler, Sher­iff

PRESS RELEASE — Sheriff’s Office to pro­vide more trans­par­ent infor­ma­tion to Coun­ty Residents

Sher­iff Mark But­ler is pleased to announce that the War­ren Coun­ty Sheriff’s Office will soon be offer­ing Cit­i­zen Con­nect with real time crime activ­i­ty data. This is a won­der­ful way to increase trans­paren­cy, pro­vide more con­ve­nient cus­tomer ser­vice and ensure bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion with our res­i­dents.  Start­ing May 1^st, coun­ty res­i­dents will be able to receive auto­mat­ed crime noti­fi­ca­tions using the free Cit­i­zen Con­nect Appli­ca­tion from South­ern Soft­ware, which will be made avail­able on the WCSO web­site.  This Appli­ca­tion pro­vides the fol­low­ing online services:

• Dai­ly Reports – A list­ing of Arrest, Inci­dent and Acci­dent Reports will be avail­able to the pub­lic. This is what is com­mon­ly referred to as the “police blot­ter” and will keep res­i­dents bet­ter informed as to the inci­dents around their homes, busi­ness­es, or routes of travel. 
• Inci­dent Reports – An abbre­vi­at­ed report may be down­loaded by Inci­dent Num­ber, Date Range, Name or Loca­tion. Please note that there will be no nar­ra­tive includ­ed. Per­sons wish­ing to obtain the more com­plete report will still be required to file a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion request with our office.
• Want­ed Per­sons – A list of the most want­ed peo­ple will be made avail­able to the pub­lic in this search­able database.
• Miss­ing Per­sons – A list of active miss­ing per­sons reports will be post­ed. Once locat­ed, these reports will be closed and can no longer be seen on the web­site. This will be help­ful in keep­ing the pub­lic aware of endan­gered peo­ple, with the intent to locate them quicker.
• Anony­mous Tip Line – Allows res­i­dents to report a tip with­out leav­ing their per­son­al information.

Once the office and the pub­lic have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to eval­u­ate the Cit­i­zen Con­nect appli­ca­tion, Sher­iff But­ler states there are oth­er options that might be explored such as Crime Alerts which allows res­i­dents to sign up and receive Crime Alerts via email of crimes tak­ing place. 

Approved for release by Sher­iff Mark But­ler on April 17, 2023