The Morristown Police Department can alert subscribers to neighborhood-level emergencies and issues via cell phone text messages with photos and emails through Nixle, a community alert network.

Reported on July 10, 2010

MORRISTOWN, N.J.—What does a bear on South Street and a $7,200 SL3 bike stolen from Marty’s Reliable Cycle Shop have in common? Both earned a spot on Morristown’s community alert network. An unidentified homicide victim in Newark was returned to his family with the alert’s help.

The man slain in Newark was returned to his Bernardsville family after the Essex County prosecutor’s office, which believed the victim lived in the area, contacted the Morristown Police Department, which broadcast a Nixle alert. The Bernardsville Police Department identified the man but the killer was not found, according to Stuart Greer, a detective in the Morristown Police Department.

People want news instantly, police officers are not everywhere and technology is costly. Partnering with Nixle Community Information Service, starting this week, the Morristown Police Department can alert subscribers to neighborhood-level emergencies and issues via cell phone text messages with photos and e-mails. Alerts can include information on road closures, traffic, weather-related incidents, missing persons, wanted persons, child abduction attempts, burglaries and suspicious criminal activity in real time, thus improving public safety.

The department, which did not have an existing instant alert mechanism, joins surrounding communities like Chatham Township, Madison, New Providence, Hanover Township and Morris Plains as well as cities throughout the country that use Nixle.

More than 4,000 agencies nationwide have partnered with Nixle since 2009. It is not clear how many New Jersey agencies are included since phone calls to Nixle’s Mount Laurel headquarters were not returned. Nixle’s partnership with International Justice and Public Safety Network, an international computer-based message system that links local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, prompted police departments’ participation.

Privately funded, Nixle makes money, according to its website, through technology licensing and sales to the private sector.

With police department budgets frozen or slashed, the technology-driven network adds more public safety at no cost to the department or subscribers, other than standard text message rates.

“Like most smaller police departments, Morristown doesn’t have the budget to pay for a secure system like Nixle,” said Greer, who noted that supervisors are trained in decision-making for posting alerts.

Subscribers can log onto www.nixle.com, enter zip codes to follow, and an e-mail address and cell phone number for alerts to be sent. For text alerts only, users can text the zip codes they want to receive alerts about to 888777. Nixle keeps user identities anonymous.

For people who do not text or e-mail but have a computer, Greer suggests going to the Nixle website. The downside is that it does not have the immediacy that texts and e-mails offer.

Police Chief John Paton of Chatham Township said he used Nixle mostly for road closure alerts in the past year. On July 8, he alerted residents that the township’s water was safe to drink despite its “colored” nature.

Chad Rybka, a police officer in the Madison Police Department, said Nixle stopped a contractor’s scam in May. “Unfortunately, the incident did not result in an arrest but the resident did not become another victim,” he said.

Nixle is credited with assisting law enforcement personnel in Fayetteville, N.C., with an arrest in June after police broadcast an alert containing surveillance camera photos and information about a break-in. At a shopping mall in Amarillo, Texas, police captured a fugitive wanted for aggravated robbery and probation violation after an alert was sent out in January.

The bike and bear? The bike was not recovered and the bear went away without incident, said Greer.

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