Online crime map, missing child alert also part of new  programs

By CAROL STUART
For Brentwood Home Page
The Brentwood Police Department has added three new public safety services and is asking city residents to go online and input their information to make the new Smart911 program help with emergency responses.

The programs are:

* Crime MapNimbus that allows you to see what kinds of crimes are going on in your neighborhood – even sending email alerts.

* Child Is Missing program that alerts area neighbors in the case of a missing child or mentally or physically challenged adult.

* Smart911 service, which is especially important these days when many people call from cell phones, often no longer having land lines at their homes.

Walsh

“We receive so many calls from cell phones, and many times they're hang-ups,” said Capt. Tommy Walsh, who commands the BPD technical/support services division. “We would immediately have information on the caller if they've signed up for this service, and we'll be able to better respond if there is an emergency or be able to get in touch with them and make sure everything's OK if there's not.”

In addition, residents – at no cost to them – can give Brentwood police and fire departments additional information such as medical conditions, specific info about their residence, photos of themselves and children, and whether someone is on oxygen, for instance.    

“And I'm just barely scratching the surface,” Walsh said. “But those are all things -- if the fire department was going and there was a fire and there's oxygen used in the house, it would be important to know that. With this system we're going to know without relying on the caller to tell us about it.”

The information is secure and won’t ever be sold or used for any purse other than public safety, Walsh said. Only the Brentwood Police and Fire departments would have access to the information, and dispatchers would relay it to responders in the field.

“It’s going to be dependent on the resident to enter that information into the Smart911 database,” Walsh said. “This program really does us no good if no one uses it.”

Residents should go to www.brentwoodpolice.org, where the BPD has also made improvements to its website. The department added links with logos to each of the new programs – along with the Nixle notification system to receive public safety alerts, and the online crash report site to retrieve accident reports.

The city decided to buy the Smart911 program after the company also sold the service to Metro-Nashville and approached Brentwood Police while in the area. Funds were used within the existing budget, Walsh said.

“Whenever a 911 call is received by any public safety organization, the amount of time it takes to get people on the scene and the information that is needed to address whatever the situation might be is very critical, especially when you have a short period of time,” Walsh said.

“Smart911 gives us the ability to have information that normally a dispatcher would need to ask questions of a person who is making a call. And they may be emotional about a situation going on, or any of number of things going in the residence might take the caller's attention away and limit the amount of information that's available. If the homeowner has gone in and entered this information, this Smart911 service allows us to have that information virtually immediately as soon as the call is placed.”

A sidebar would pop up on the dispatcher’s screen with info from the residence where the call  is being placed, he said. The system has already been operational for 3-4 weeks, along with the other programs, and Walsh as a city resident signed up and used his cell phone to test Smart911.

“When I made a cell phone call, it immediately populated my name and information about me that I had entered into the database,” he said.

Citizens can map crime in their neighborhood

The MapNimbus online crime mapping is also available to residents without any user costs, although the city did purchase it from existing funds.

“That's something I've been really passionate about since I came into my position,” Walsh said. “I felt like it was important for a resident to be able to see what's going on in their neighborhood. And they can see that without calling us, and it eliminates rumors.

“… They can set it up where it'll send them an email if there's a crime within a certain geographic area close to their residence. They can search for specific crimes if they're interested. A person that was maybe moving to this area that wanted to get information about crime stats could log in and do a search and see what kinds of crimes were happening in the city. There's information on sex offenders if you were concerned if you were moving into the area.

No BPD personnel are required to enter the data, with it automatically pulling information directly from records management after an officer completes a report in the field and submits it. The site updates once in a 24-hour period and plots the incident on the map.

Last weekend’s vehicle burglaries at numerous addresses in Shadow Creek and Southern Woods subdivisions, where arrests would be made, would show in the system, for example. Walsh, however, noted in that particular instance, it would show up as just one incident due to the initial call at one address.

“I just think it provides a good resource for the residents to  able to see the things that are going on the city, and maybe help us educate folks although the crime rate is very low and it's a very safe city that there are things that are taking place,” he said.

Program calls public if child, elderly or disabled adult missing

The Child Is Missing program is federally funded and is offered at no charge to police departments and citizens. Brentwood Police did need to do some internal training before announcing the program.

The system not only calls up to 1,000 numbers in a minute in a geographic area near where a child is missing, but also for an endangered adult such as an elderly person with dementia or Alzheimer’s.

“We could call in and give basic information to staff of the Child is Missing, and they would blanket the area with telephone calls to try to enlist the help of the public to try to find the person that is missing,” Walsh said.

Walsh can recall less than five times in the past 20 years when it would be needed for a child, and usually children are found by parents, police or at a neighbor’s house before such an alert would be activated.

The police department wanted to announce all three programs at the same time to get the word out to residents.

“I’d encourage folks to go to our website to take a look at the links, log in and look at the crime map and specifically that Smart911 service. If they would look at that and sign up for it, that's really going to be helpful to the city in providing that information especially when it's a critical situation,” Walsh said.

“Although we don't want anything to happen, it's much more helpful for us if something bad does happen and have that information on the front end.”