MIDDLETON — With the click of a button, the Middleton Police Department can notify hundreds of people what’s going on in town through their new, in-house designed application for smartphones.
At any given time and from any location, the department can issue an alert to inform the public of a threat or to calm their fears.
“Following a hostage situation back in January, we did a critical incident review. One of the problems we found was that there were a lot of people who were afraid. We received many calls of people asking if they were safe,” said Sgt. Tim Brown.
He explained that the high volume of calls tied up the dispatch lines and made the department realize that people need to know what’s going on.
“The public feedback we were constantly receiving was that the community members didn’t know what we were doing,” said Brown.
A Facebook page was started to get the message out to the public of what’s going on. “Then we realized that not everybody uses Facebook,” said Brown.
While many departments have stopped there, MPD went on to create a Twitter account as well as a blog.
“The blog gave us more diversity in what we could do compared to the social media sites,” said Brown.
Nothing was reaching people in the immediate fashion that they had hoped for, so Brown, with a background in programming, designed an app. for the department.
Brown, who has written law enforcement software including 3D forensics software, designed a simple, user-friendly app. that allows the department to alert the public instantaneously.
The app., titled “Middleton Police” launched back in March of this year. Over the past few months, it’s evolved to fit the needs and use of the public.
There are ten main features of the app.
The first is the “call us” tab which offer single-touch calling ability to 911, the Middleton Police Station, dispatch, and State Police Troop A. There is also an “email” tab which allows users to contact the department directly via email.
The “alerts” tab is actually a collection of alerts issued recently. Through the app., the department can issue alerts which pop up immediately as a notification on the user’s phone. These alerts are then stored in the “alerts” tab for up to a few months.
The “directions” tab links directly to the user’s GPS to give them door-to-door directions to a nearby police department or Frisbie Memorial Hospital.
The next two features are “crime tips” and “crime cam” both of which allow the user to report crime to the department. ..Continued.. by Mikaela K. Reynolds
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