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Bellevue Fire and Police Implement Emergency Paging System

The Bellevue Police and Fire Departments are adopting a smart messaging system to receive messages ranging from routine court date notifications to messages regarding significant emergencies. The system is funded with a federal grant from the Department of Homeland Security and covers both Douglas and Sarpy counties. All emergency responders and government officials who would need to be notified in an emergency, will be set up in the Codespear smart messaging system.

BPD’s Chief of Police, John Stacey says the system is designed to "hunt you down and find you". Through the use of a computer and depending upon how it’s set up, a recipient receives a message on every electronic device s/he has in the order which is preset. If s/he doesn’t acknowledge receipt of the message, the system will repeat until it receives a response.

Codespear’s main purpose is to notify first responders of a major emergency, but Chief Stacey explained, "locally we decided that this is the type of tool that you don’t want to put on the shelf and pull it out only when you need it. Instead, we’re going to implement it into the daily routines of police and fire to enhance our basic paging system." Codespear is expected to be implemented fully no later than the end of May.

Photo: Lt Mark Elbert receives message from Codespear smart message system.