ThisWeek CW 01/15/2015

http://www.thisweeknews.com/content/stories/canalwinchester/news/2015/01/12/madison-township-police-program-gives-residents-free-text-email-alerts.html

The Madison Township Police Department has introduced a new alert service aimed at keeping residents safe and informed instantly through their mobile devices.

The system, provided by Nixle.com, is designed to deliver text, email and web-based notifications based on ZIP code to residents who have signed up for the service.

There is no charge to the township or residents for the service, although text messaging rates could apply, depending what phone messaging plan residents have on their cell phones.

Township Police Det. Nate Schiffel said the department is hoping to get a majority of residents signed up for the service.

“This is an opt-in style program, so you will only reach those people who choose to sign up, which is why we want to get the word out to all of the residents and get a majority of them to sign up,” Schiffel said.

“I think this will be particularly helpful since, for many people, they no longer have a land-line style home phone that we can push notifications to, so this type of service has picked up where the old left off.”

To opt-in to the system, residents can visit the police department website at madisontownship.org/index. php/police or can visit the nixle.com website directly.

Residents can sign up for both text messages or email notifications; another option for text messages only is to text the home ZIP code to 888777 from the cell phone that residents want text messages sent to.

Trustee Gary McDonald called the service “another tool in the police department’s arsenal in combating crime in real time.”

“This will allow immediate notification from the police department to residents within the community of certain crimes, suspect information and crime trends within certain quadrants of the community, and will assist Block Watch in their meetings and crime alerts,” McDonald said.

Det. Keith Mallory agreed, saying that he sees this as a great addition to the outreach work the department is already doing, and to the work the active Block Watch group is doing using Facebook.

“This is new to us but the setup is easy and it pushes info out to the residents, which is very beneficial for things like missing children alerts,” he said. “It will be a good resource for alerting residents to dangerous situations of all types.”