Tyrone Citizens,

I am pleased to inform you that the Town Crier has just undergone a major upgrade thanks to a service called Nixle.com!

Nixle is a partnership between several public associations including the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Sheriff’s Association, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors that provides feature rich community notification systems to law enforcement agencies at no cost. The system is built on the National Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (NLETS) infrastructure, which is the same platform agencies across the country use to deliver and receive information on stolen property, wanted persons, and criminal histories. This platform is extremely secure and stable, which raises the probability of our message getting to you even during emergencies when internet traffic may be higher.

The Nixle system provides us with more functionality and more ways to get our message out – all from one location. This includes: email AND text message broadcasts, online posts, and it integrates with our Twitter account. The system also allows us to target our messages geographically within the Town if needed – members enter their home address OR their closest intersection during the registration process. This allows the member to see if they are in or near an affected area if we send a targeted message!

Now that our marked patrol units are equipped with in-car computers, we will have the ability to send emergency notifications to you 24/7 as all of our supervisors will be trained on this new system. Members who opt to enter their cell phone information into the system during the registration process would benefit the most from this setup as Nixle’s “push” technology would allow you to receive any message posted nearly instantly no matter where you are.

This means you will always be up to date on severe weather and other potentially life-threatening situations.

The Town Crier email list has served us well over the past year and we will continue to post messages on it until the majority of our members have made the switch to the new system.

I invite you all to join us on Nixle.com today so that you can begin receiving the benefits of this amazing new technology.

Go to nixle.com and click on the big blue “Register Now” button. You will be asked for your home address or closest intersection in the second phase of the registration process – this is the ONLY way the system knows to send our messages to you, so it is important that you provide this information. We DO NOT have access to that information as it is stored on Nixle’s servers.

For those members who do not live in Tyrone, but would like to continue receiving our messages, I recommend that you enter Senoia Road & Arrowood Road as your closest intersection. That is pretty much the center of Town and will allow you to continue in the system.

Once you have registered, the system will take you to our “Municipal Wire” page where you will see a few sample entries. We’ve added these so that you will see how the different message types appear. All of the message types – Alerts, Advisories, Community, and Traffic – are published via email, text message, on the municipal wire, and on our Twitter page. If you do not wish to receive text alerts on all message types, click on the orange “Wire” button at the top of the page, which will allow you to setup which message types will send you a text message. You will receive all Alerts via text message by default if you entered your cell number during registration.

If you wish to cancel all text message alerts at any time in the future, click on the orange “Account” button at the top of the page and check the box beside “Disable All SMS Notifications”.

Nixle offers their services to all law enforcement agencies across the country and hundreds are in the testing phase. The TPD is the 16th agency in the US to go live with this technology and most likely the first in the State of Georgia. We are very proud to be able to offer this service to our citizens and we look forward to keeping you informed on all matters of public safety in the future.

Please feel free to provide us with your feedback on this new system by sending me an email at bperkins@tyrone.org. I am also happy to offer you assistance in getting signed up, so don’t hesitate to contact me if needed.

Respectfully,

Chief Brandon Perkins