Comment by tptacek

Find the most important message board or mailing list that politics in your municipality happens on. For us, it's 2-3 Facebook Groups (I wish it weren't, but it's not even a little up to me). Learn as much as you can about how things work, be generally helpful on the forums, volunteer when opportunities open up, get to know the people on your police oversight and technology boards (you probably have both), and start talking to them about this stuff.

Anybody interested in more details, you can reach out and I can shoot you our General Order. I should write this up somewhere.