On alert: Cops offer instant info to keep town informed

Beginning Aug. 1, the Westport Police Department plans on keeping residents in the loop -- instantly -- as situations arise throughout town.

When the next big storm strikes, Westport police can now send text messages about knocked down trees, toppled power lines and blocked roads.

When the next car accident backs up traffic, residents will be the first to know via their cell phones.

If an incident happens at a school, parents can instantly be alerted about what happened. If they have two children in different schools, settings can be modified so they can receive updates in specific areas through e-mail.

The possibilities are broad, and police hope that a new service will provide something more accessible than Facebook updates and more secure than a Twitter account.

"We're making a big push to use existing technology that's going to benefit the community rather than using technology just for technology's sake," said Deputy Chief Dale Call.

The town already uses an emergency notification system, CodeRed, to call local phones in case of an emergency with a prerecorded message. These messages can be pinpointed to target certain areas, but police reserve these for emergencies, such as a missing person or extreme weather. With their new service, called Nixle, CodeRed alerts can be supplemented with texts about smaller incidents.

Rather than pre-recorded calls, the notifications will come in the form of texts and e-mails. With smart phones, a map can be accessed on a smartphone to see where the incident is occurring. Residents can sign up through www.nixle.com and pinpoint certain areas, and types of events, that they would like alerts on. They can even set it so alerts won't be sent at certain times of the day.

Westport police have been looking for ways keep town residents involved in "minor" incidents that don't warrant an emergency call. Facebook was considered, but deemed not as engaging a forum. Twitter was also considered, but concerns over security ruled out that option.

"The problem with Twitter is that it's really easy to pretend to be somebody else," Call said. "It can take very little effort for someone to pretend to be at the Westport police and send things out to people."

In the past, police would send a press release to media outlets -- such as newspapers and radio stations -- in order to get the word out about certain case. The results were inconsistent because of the time it took. Further complicating things, according to Call, is that many people now listen to satellite radio, which does not pick up local broadcasts.

For the past year, Call has been researching Nixle to see how other departments use it. He's been impressed with the results and has begun training officers how to use it. The learning curve is small, he said, but the bigger challenge rests in balancing the amount of notifications that will be sent.

"The question for us is going to be how much do we put out, how often do we put it out without pushing the envelope on information overload?" he said.

The service is free to the town, but users will have to pay their standard text messaging rates.