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At
12:36 p.m. on Monday, September 20th, the phone rang. The Caller ID window
showed "Emergency Operations 971-6927."
The call was a recorded message urging attendence at a forum
to hear about the ward system and the direct election of the mayor. There
were passages quoted from a publicity release sent out by the Charlottesville
Elections Task
Force.
The Charge from Council
The Charlottesville Elections Study Task Force was created by the Charlottesville
City Council in April 2004 and charged by Council members to consider a
series of issues including:
1) Explore the concept of directly electing the mayor.
2) Explore the concept of restructuring the Council election by wards or
a combination of wards and at-large.
3) Explore the concept of enlarging the number of Council members.
4) Explore other best practices relating to representation of citizens,
including but not limited to remuneration and term limitation. |
The message ended by suggesting a call to Charlottesville Registrar Sheri
Iachetta (970-3250) for further information.
When we called back to 971-6927, we learned that it was the "City
Watch Automated Voice Service System." Checking further with Kaye Harden,
Emergency Services Coordinator for the Charlottesville/Albemarle/University
of Virginia Emergency Communications Center (which runs the City Watch system)
we learn that the automated phoning "... was a non-official use of
the system, and we put a stop to it."
According to Coordinator Harden, the City Watch system is intended to
call lots of people in a short time -- to round up emergency services workers,
or to alert the public to a threat. A member of the Charlottesville City
government tells us that there has been an understanding that the system
could also be used for neighborhood announcements. In this case, over 3,000
calls were made city-wide.
The protocol
for use of the system specifically states that non-emergency uses must
be approved by an emergency-response agency, and that in no case is it for
use for city-wide (or county-wide) calling. (At a calling rate of 800 to
1200 calls per hour, a city-wide distribution would take above 10 hours.)
Telephone Notification Systems
City Watch, the system operated by the Emergency
Services office can quickly call lots of phone numbers from lists in
a database and deliver a prepared message. Communities purchase these systems
with the intention of using them to alert people to:
- "Missing persons searches
- Hazardous materials incidents
- Criminal activity alerts
- Hurricane evacuations
- Sex offender relocations
- Neighborhood watch programs and more!" (Temple Terrace, FL,
municipal
website)
Earlier this year the news wires carried a story demonstrating the use
of such a system in a very localized emergency:
- "Sheriff's Deputies [in Forsyth County, Georgia] responded early
Tuesday afternoon to a suicide threat call in the Hamptons Subdivision.
A resident had barricaded himself in his home and was threatening to shoot
himself. That's when the Reverse 9-1-1 system was called into use.
- As Sheriff's Office negotiators talked with the subject, the Reverse
911 system was programmed to call every nearby home, advising residents
of the ongoing situation and asking them to remain in their homes until
the standoff was resolved.
In addition, the Sheriff's Office contacted the Board of Education and
made arrangements to have the school buses for that area delayed. Parents
of the children who were on those buses were also notified that their children
were safe and would be delivered home as soon as the situation was over.
The standoff was resolved peacefully at 3:30 p.m. when the suspect surrendered
to deputies and was taken into custody. As soon as the situation ended
the Reverse 911 System immediately called every number that had previously
been called and advised them that they could resume their normal activities...."
(Associated Press, April 1, 2004)
Ned Michie is president of the Greenbrier Neighborhood Association in
Charlottesville. He tells us that a year or so ago, he learned of the City
Watch system. Early on, he was told, it was used in the Barracks Road Shopping
Center to notify merchants about crimes involving other businesses and to
warn of fraud and scam schemes to watch out for. He was encouraged to create
a list of people in the neighborhood who wished to be included for neighborhood-specific
non-emergency messages
He does not recall being offered training for himself--"it would
have been our local patrol officer who actually used the thing," he
says. But due to changes within CPD and lack of interest in the Greenbrier
community, nothing more was done to promote use of the system there.
WVIR-TV29, the local NBC outlet, reports that on September 23, the system
was put to use to alert a neighborhood to the
threat from a peeping Tom.
There are some simple issues that need to be resolved when a community
implements such a system. Unlisted and cellphone numbers are not in the
database; deaf folks need to be contacted through a special system; and
some especially helpful answering machines won't accept automated messages.
(Dave Sagarin, September 24, 2004) |
Maurice Jones, our City Director of Communications, explains that Ann
Reinicke [Republican
candidate for the Charlottesville City Council in 2004 and member of
the Orangedale Neighborhood Association], as a "neighborhood leader"
had received training from the Charlottesville Police Department in the
use of the phone system. Jones says that City Watch has been used by community
groups for the purpose of making announcements of general interest -- "for
the purpose of notifying neighbors." What has not been clear, he says,
is what level of authorization a person needed before using the system for
a non-emergency purpose.
In this instance, according to the Communications Director, Mrs. Reinicke
"should have cleared it with Kaye Harden's office, or at least with
the Charlottesville P.D." She has since met with the emergency communications
folk and the city manager's office, and "now understands that not getting
authorization in the first place, was not a good thing."
Jones tells us that this point will be made clear to all the other authorized
users of the system. We are waiting to learn more about who these users
are and how they get to be authorized.
If you are an authorized user of the City Watch phone system, or if you
have an opinion about the use of the terror-threat hotline to get the public
out to a forum, let us know at george@
loper.org.
For more, see Ann
Reinicke's Telephone Invite Gets Questioned.
You are also welcome to send comments for attribution about the questions
raised by the task force to george@loper.org. For more, see Lloyd
Snook Comments on Ward Systems.
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