CPD to use mass messaging program Nixle
The communication database provides free alerts to subscribers.
Published March 23, 2010
In April, Columbia Police Department will start sending messages to the community through a program called Nixle, City of Columbia spokeswoman Toni Messina said. The messages will consist of alerts, advisories, community messages and traffic notices.
"(Nixle) is basically like Twitter, but much nicer," CPD spokeswoman Jessie Haden said. "It has a lot more capabilities."
CPD will debut the program April 1, with the other departments starting to use it the same month. Haden said other city departments might follow suit later on.
Messina said city agencies that deal with emergency and public safety situations would most likely use the program. These agencies are the police, fire, joint communications, emergency management and water and light departments.
People can sign up to receive the messages by e-mail, text message or on the Web, said Bonnie Miller, Nixle's senior director of operations. Miller said about 3,500 governmental agencies across the country are using the program.
"It looked like a good way to use a service that was free to us, free to subscribers, that would use official information from an authoritative agency," Messina said. "(Nixle) is not like collecting tweets or posting things on Facebook from just anyone. It's using information provided by authorized agencies that deal with very specific types of situations."
Haden said CPD would issue alerts, the highest level of messages, about incidents such as a shooting or a significant road closure. Advisories, the second-highest level of messages, will concern issues, such as a string of crimes or a wanted person in the area.
Alerts from the Columbia Fire Department might be notifications of a hazardous waste spill or a particularly bad fire, CFD Fire Marshall Steven Sapp said. Advisories from CFD would concern incidents, such as a string of fires in the area.
Community messages, such as a neighborhood watch meeting and traffic alerts, are the other two levels of messages, Haden said.
People outside the city can also sign up to be message recipients. Haden said this might appeal to the parents of MU students who want to keep tabs on what is happening in Columbia.
One reason the city decided to use Nixle rather than Twitter or Facebook was because those two sites do not permanently record the messages. Haden said the city wanted to have all its messages saved for the sake of transparency and open records laws.
Sapp said he first read about Nixle in a professional journal and CFD brought it to the attention of the public communications department about a year ago. Messina said the city has been planning its use of the program since then.
The city will promote the program, and Columbia's Web site will have links to the Nixle site, Messina said.
"The first step is to get the word out to as many people as we can to go ahead and sign up," Haden said.