Image: Nixle.com

Awhile back I asked for guest bloggers, and tonight I’m pleased to offer the first: Brandon Perkins, chief of police in Tyrone, GA (not far from Atlanta). Brandon and I connected on (guess where?) Twitter (he’s @brandonperkins), and he blogs at Chief Daddy, where this originally appeared.

No More Excuses

If one were to ask any given selection of police departments across the country what they are doing to stay in touch with their citizens, he would receive a mixture of responses but my guess would be that a few or more of them would be that they don’t stay in touch. When asked why, they would provide more mixed responses such as: “why should we?”, “we can’t fund the required technology”, “we don’t have the time”, etc.

A new community information system available at no cost to every law enforcement agency in the U.S. invalidates any excuse. The new service, Nixle.com, allows law enforcement agencies to send emergency alerts and other information to their citizens via email, SMS (text messaging), online posts, and Twitter all from one very easy to use web based application. Sending alerts really is as easy as sending an email and the citizens can select how they receive their messages based on the level of alert sent by the agency.

On the backend, an agency can choose to broadcast their message to their entire jurisdiction or they can enter an incident address and then select a broadcast radius. This is extremely helpful during incidents requiring evacuations, missing persons cases, and in sending alerts to areas that are being targeted by a specific MO.

The system also allows the agency to setup multiple users, which would allow alerts to be sent 24/7. I am in the process of training all of my field supervisors on the system so that they can log in from their MDTs to send messages as needed.

One item that I found to be particularly helpful is that Nixle provides each member agency with a separate test site that is not viewable by the public. This is a great tool and allows the agency to “play” with it and train their officers without worrying about sending a false alert and creating any misunderstandings among citizens.

Any administrator who may be skeptical about the system may find comfort in the fact that Nixle is the result of partnerships between several nationally recognized professional organizations including the IACP, the National Sheriff’s Association, the Police Executive Research Forum, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Verisign, the International Fire and Emergency Responder Network, the National Emergency Management Association, and NLETS. In fact, Nixle’s servers are housed in NLETS’ secure facility!

For those who think their citizens wouldn’t listen, let me point you to a 2008 study conducted by CDW-G, a nationally recognized government IT services provider, entitled “This is a Test – Updating America’s Emergency Alert Infrastructure“. This study asked residents of America’s 20 largest cities to rate their local government’s ability and performance in keeping them informed during emergencies among other things.

When asked “If your city had an emergency alert system in place, what kind of information would you be interested in receiving?”, respondents gave the following responses:

• Impending Weather Threats: 82%
• School Closures: 76%
• Crime Incidents: 70%
• Health Threats: 66%
• Major Roadway Closures: 48%
• Terrorist Threats/Incidents: 47%

Remember: over 1400 residents from America’s largest cities participated in this study, so this is fairly compelling evidence that your citizens would listen if offered the information – they’d also be appreciative of it!

Other interesting results included:

When asked “How would you rate your city’s performance alerting citizens?”, respondents gave the following responses:

• Very Strong: 10%
• Good: 26%
• Fair: 22%
• Mediocre: 6%
• Weak: 3%
• Can’t Rate: 33%

Why did so many respond that they couldn’t rate their city? Because 66% of the respondents advised that they were “unsure” when asked “Does your city have a modern emergency alert notification system
such as mass e-mail or text messaging in place?”

I highly recommend reading this study as it provides a lot of useful and interesting data.

The title of this post says it all, cities no longer have excuses for not providing this service to their citizens. Nixle is provided at NO Cost, it is extremely secure, it is easy to use, and it allows an agency to use a variety of methods to get their message out.

Go to Nixle.com to learn more, watch a video, and get started!

Need help or have questions? Post a comment or send me an email – I’ll be glad to help or offer my assistance.

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