A new twist on 911 capability
Citizen involvement in community safety and security is a long-standing tradition in American public safety. Properly focused, it can be a powerful weapon in the fight against crime.
The challenge for law enforcement agencies is to provide public safety information promptly and accurately to the public, without sacrificing their physical presence and visibility in the community.
To that end, a new computer-based technology system, introduced in 1993, allows officers to widely distribute information within minutes without sacrificing their visibility in the community. The Reverse 911 interactive community policing system operates just like the 911 system, except instead of citizens calling 911, public safety agencies call citizens.
Reverse 911 combines database and GIS technologies. The database consists of telephone numbers and addresses of residents and businesses in a given community. The GIS capability adds detailed maps of that same geographic area.
Users can point and click to select a precise geographic area, defining it literally block-by-block. The system then sends out calls to warn or alert citizens of certain situations.
The system operator simply records a voice message to be delivered and selects a group or a targeted geographic area on the systems map.
An experienced operator can activate the calling process in as little as five minutes and begin saturating a neighborhood with hundreds of contacts per hour.
The Reverse 911 system also allows a department to serve hearing-impaired residents and give smaller communities in a large metropolitan area a reliable means of getting their word out.
With out it, communities are dependent on the media to deliver a message to the public. And whether the news media will do that depends on how newsworthy it deems the message.
In Beech Grove, Ind., the system was used to alert businesses of a series of burglaries, targeting affected businesses and allowing them to take precautions necessary to bring the break-ins to a halt.
In a nearby city, officials used the technology to locate a missing child within 30 critical minutes of the report being taken. And in Portsmouth, Va., the system resulted in the capture of a suspect who was passing bad checks.
Experts believe crime must be fought in the neighborhoods, block by block. And, since emergencies often occur after normal working hours or on weekends, Reverse 911 enables cities and counties to mobilize police auxiliary groups or call out off-duty emergency response personnel in the event of a critical situation.
Other uses may be more informational in nature. Cities can notify neighbors about crime watch meetings or simply provide useful seasonal tips on topics such as safe trick-or-treating at Halloween or protecting against theft of holiday gift purchases.
The same technology can be used by other agencies. For example, it can be used to alert neighborhoods to detours, closings or changes in traffic patterns resulting from upcoming street repairs or construction. The system may even be used as a supplemental notification of a town meeting or an upcoming zoning hearing.
In addition to the outbound technology, other capabilities are available. These include a comprehensive voice mail system to increase the public’s ability to communicate with a safety agency and a community information line or community bulletin board.
Such communication capabilities can pay off handsomely not only for a community, but for safety agencies as well.
