Media

October 18, 2005

Sheriff's department now offering wealth of information online
Posted: Monday, Oct 17, 2005 - 10:25:44 pm EDT
By BILL ARCHER
Bluefield Daily Telegraph

PRINCETON - The Mercer County Sheriff's Department has made a major leap forward in the area of communications with the launch of a web site that includes a veritable treasure trove of information.

Unlike the “captain” (Strother Martin) of Paul Newman's prison camp in the 1967 classic movie, “Cool Hand Luke,” who quipped: “What we have here is failure to communicate,” Mercer County Sheriff Danny Wills worked with his godson, Partap Verma, to develop a user-friendly site that contains an incredible amount of useful information.

“We stayed in close contact for the past eight weeks as we were working on the site,” Wills said. “Sometimes, we would work on it as late as 2 a.m. I'm proud of the site and I'm proud of all the work he's done on it.”

The site is located at http://www.wvmcs.org and includes interesting historical information as well as data related to the present staff. While some features are listed as "under construction," the majority of the categories on the site are complete. The site includes links to the West Virginia State Police web site and to the state sex offender registry. 

"We're still working on it," Wills said. "We hope to build it up to a point where it will be a one-stop shopping site for information on the county. I hope other departments will see the site and develop their own sites." In an e-mail announcing the launch of the site, Wills expressed his appreciation to Chief Deputy Darrell Bailey and the entire department
for their help in creating the site. "The site was initiated with the idea of honoring the members of this department for their dedication and hard work," Wills wrote. "I truly appreciate all of you and what you do each day."

Verma, 27, started building web sites as an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland. He graduated from the Dickinson School of Law of Penn State University earlier this year and has accepted a position as an attorney with the U.S. State Department. "We want to keep adding information to the site," Wills said. "We check it frequently and will work to make improvements."

– Contact Bill Archer at barcher@bdtonline.com