Former Lee County Sheriff Rod Shoap

Sheriff Mike Scott

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The Lee County Sheriff’s Office is hip to these high-tech times.

In addition to its official Web site, countless gadgets of varying expense, plus at least one unauthorized, underground Internet message board, the agency now has its very own entry on Wikipedia.

It’s not alone: At least 12 of Florida’s 67 sheriff’s offices have dedicated pages on the Web’s enormously popular user-generated encyclopedia. Collier County isn’t listed, but Hillsborough County has a lengthy entry detailing the agency’s history, structure and roster of sheriffs going back to the 19th century.

Indeed, it’s a lot like most of the Sunshine State sheriff entries.

Except Lee County.

You knew sparks would fly during this summer’s race for Lee sheriff — now it seems the war has taken to the Web.

Witness the Wikipedia entry.

As of Friday, right beneath a mini-biography of Sheriff Mike Scott ran a list of the agency’s “Notable Achievements.” Dating back only as far as 2005 when, incidentally, Scott took over. If you compared that list with one Scott keeps on his own campaign Web site, you’d find chunks of them match nearly verbatim.

So which of the recent, agency-wide achievements are so notable that they should be shared with Wikipedia readers from Des Moines to Jakarta? “Restructured false alarm fees,” one item boasts. “Recalled ‘honorary’ wallet badges from non law enforcement recipients.”

If you work for the agency, you probably know what those things mean. Scott sure does — he has them tacked onto his list at the campaign Web site.

Indeed, of the 22 items on Scott’s list, at least 17 also appear under the “Lee County (Florida) Sheriff’s Office” entry on Wikipedia. With a few words switched around.

To be clear, the sheriff said Thursday he had nothing to do with the agency’s Wikipedia entry. He said he’d never even seen it.

But Scott’s not exactly sitting out of the brewing campaign Web wars.

In a section of his candidacy site titled “A Very Sad Story,” Scott posted roughly four-year-old newspaper clips with headlines needling his opponent, former Lee sheriff Rod Shoap. “Shoap requests record budget,” one reads. “Shoap’s ties to aide questioned.”

That last one brings up a particularly sore point.

Shoap has cited those old allegations of an extra-marital affair with his assistant as a reason he was loathe to put his family through a race to reclaim his old job. And he cited them Thursday as justification for the swipes he takes against Scott on his own campaign site.

Under the “Q & A” section, Shoap asks himself: “Have you ever smoked marijuana or used any other illegal drugs?” No, Shoap answers. But funny you should ask! Turns out, “my opponent, Mike Scott, has used illegal drugs.” Underlined for emphasis.

Shoap explains that Scott wrote on his original application for employment — which is public record — that he tried marijuana once, apparently in about 1983. See it for yourself; Shoap posted the application right there on his campaign page.

“But his attack is OK?” Shoap said in an interview, referring to the allegation of an affair. “Yes, I’m going to come out swinging because people need to know the real him.”

All of this might be expected in what amounts to dueling campaign literature. But how does a local race for sheriff seep into the universal sphere of Wikipedia?

In some ways, the answer is simple. Loyal viewers of Stephen Colbert’s show on Comedy Central know that anyone can type anything into a Wikipedia page (the comedian once took to a keypad on-air and reportedly wrote under his own entry that “Oregon is Idaho’s Portugal.”)

And to Scott, who said he barely knew what Wikipedia was before a reporter brought it up, the free-for-all nature of the Web-based encyclopedia begs the question: Who cares what it says?

Bonita Springs-based historian Charlie Strader said he hasn’t yet posted to the city’s Wikipedia entry. But as a powerful and widely used tool for first-reference on millions of subjects, he said, “Wikipedia will be one to stand the test of time.”

A glance at the history of the Lee County Sheriff’s Office entry shows that it began benignly enough one January evening by user “Shee0077.”

That would be, it turns out, agency spokesman John Sheehan. The version he typed up matched information on the agency’s official Web site and dovetailed with the more formal, academic entries for Hillsborough and others — history, structure, ranks.

Then user “Squat1” set to work, adding Scott’s “notable achievements.”

Contrast that list (which includes under 2007: “Rather than 4.7 percent pay raise across the board, high salaries got less while lower got more”) to Orange County’s entry, in which we learn that one of the Orlando area’s earliest sheriffs was killed in the line of duty, under murky circumstances, in 1870.

Or, under the Jacksonville sheriff’s office entry, a detailed, CSI-friendly breakdown of the detective division (latent print unit, polygraph unit, etc.)

Sheehan said he started the entry knowing how widely used Wikipedia is, particularly by young people, and hoping others with more awareness of the history of Lee’s agency would add to his section.

“Me, personally, I think Wikipedia is interesting because you can find information just on a lot of subjects,” he said. And be it the casual reader or perhaps someone interested in moving to Lee, Sheehan thought, how nice to search for the county’s top law enforcement agency, and stumble upon its rich history.