October 29, 2009

NIXLE Community Information Service Program is Launched in Fayette County

The Fayette County Sheriff’s Office and the Washington Court House Police Department are launching a new Community Information Service designed to deliver important and timely information to residents in Fayette County using the latest technology.  

This service, created by Nixle, LLC delivers trustworthy and important neighborhood-level public safety and community event notifications by web, e-mail, and cell phone.  It allows local law enforcement to connect with the community by sending real time information to citizens over their cell phone (via text messages), through e-mails and via Web access.   

Nixle is offered at no cost to users or to the law enforcement agencies.  Even though the service is FREE to users, text message rates will apply based on your mobile phone plan.  Contact your mobile phone carrier to inquire.  

One of the major benefits of Nixle is that the messages can be geographically targeted.  This means that in the event of an emergency the Sheriff’s Office and Police Department can send information  to just those users who reside in the affected area.  

There are 4 levels of notifications and each person signing up can choose what messages they want to receive and how they want to receive them.  Alert messages are urgent and time sensitive.  Advisory messages are important and time sensitive.  Community messages are for general information or non-urgent updates and are not necessarily time sensitive, and Traffic message specifically address time sensitive traffic information.   

Everyone is encouraged to participate in the Nixle project.  We hope to be better able to quickly and effectively reach residents throughout the county.  Nixle has made signing up very simple.  Upon registering their address, residents will be signed up to receive messages from both the Sheriff’s Office and the Police Department.  Only those signing up will receive messages and once signed up, residents can opt out at anytime they choose.  

Throughout the next 30 days, we will be sending out messages to test the system.  Our goal is to have the project fully functional before the winter weather arrives.      

To sign up and stay connected to local law enforcement, or for more information, go to www.nixle.com or find the link on our website at www.faycoso.com.