Below a hypothetical example how the Detroit Police Department could display the simple and easy to memorize domain name “www.detroit.police” on their bumper stickers; instead of “www.detroitmi.gov/police”, which they are using today. Both URLs may exist at the same time: even when Detroit would keep “www.detroitmi.gov/police” as their official URL they could use “www.detroit.police” as a shortcut to point to that website. Or the other way around: if they would switch to “www.detroit.police” then the old URL could still work and be routed to that new domain for the time being.

‘.police’ - a domain suffix (gTLD) exclusively for police departments globally:

• detroit.police

• atlanta.police

• NYPD.police

• chicago.police

• houston.police

• london.police

• sidney.police

• dubai.police

Likely by 2026/2027, for the only 2nd time in history after 2012, entities and communities may apply for their own domain suffix at ICANN.
.police will be a community based new gTLD application by dotPOLICE, LLC; an U.S. based public interest, non-profit entity owned & governed by stakeholders in the global police community. Every single registration will be authenticated by the relevant Government entity.

A great number of .police domains will go online at day one - routing to the relevant existing police department website even when no department has claimed the domain yet. This will ensure that .police domains are mapped to existing police department websites from day one so the Internet user may start to use .police domain names even before police departments claim their domain names:

• There are about 3,000 U.S. cities with a population greater than 10,000 people:
  www.cityname.police (e.g. www.ATLANTA.police) - will be forwarded by dotPOLICE to the relevant police department website

• There are about 15,000 police departments in the United States:
  www.department.police (e.g. www.NYPD.police) - will be forwarded to the relevant police department website

• There are about 3,142 counties in the United States:
  www.county.police (e.g. www.MiamiDade.police) - will route to the relevant department website

• Special names:
  capitol.police for example will lead to uscp.gov

In case several police departments are associated with one (city or county) name, dotPOLICE will list all relevant police departments so the Internet user can reach the desired website with one more click.

Initially dotPOLICE will ensure that all .police domains are forwarded to the relevant, existing websites. If a police department wishes to operate “their” .police domain they may “claim” their domain; but they will be required to make sure it is routing to their website. Once they claim their domain they can set up email addresses (e.g. publicaffairs@atlanta.police) or subdomains (e.g. media.atlanta.police).

Each police department will be eligible to secure several domains and route them all to the same website; for example:

• miami.police - as the main domain (current URL: miami-police.org)

• MPD.police - (the abbreviation)

  
  

This ensures that the Internet user will be enabled to intuitively “guess” the right domain name: he may type in several versions (e.g. miami.police or MPD.police) and will always reach the same website.

In some cases the future .police domain name is already displayed on police cruisers today; all it would need is to add a “dot”:

Obviously adding “www.” would make it clearer that “NYPD.POLICE” is a valid Internet Domain name; but Internet users will quickly learn, that .police is like .gov or .org a domain suffix.

For more information please send an email to alexander.schubert@dotpolice.org or call +1(202)684 6806

TWITTER. www.twitter.com/dotPOLICE