Sheriff's Office Launches Community Information Service

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The Currituck County Sheriff's Office is employing a new mode of technology to enable residents to gather critical information in real time. Nixle is a community information service provider built exclusively to provide secure and reliable communications connecting county agencies and community organizations to residents in real time.

When it comes to public safety information, you have to trust the source. Residents of Currituck County can rest easy that the local messages they receive via Nixle are authentic. Nixle differs from current services such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, which provide unauthenticated platforms for connections.

Nixle solves that problem by providing a single standardized service for consumers to receive immediate and credible neighborhood-level public safety and community information delivering information to geographically targeted consumers over their cell phones (via text messages), through e-mails and through Web access.

Sheriff Susan Johnson says that getting information out quickly can ensure citizen safety. Nixle will allow the Sheriff's Office to effectively communicate with citizens on everything from public service messages to real time public safety announcements. This service allows messages to reach up to 100,000 users in three minutes.

Information such as alerts, advisories, community events and traffic related situations are examples of the way Nixle can be utilized for keeping the citizens of Currituck County informed. Nixle is a partner with Nlets, the International Public Safety and Justice Network. Nixle's servers are housed within the Nlets secure facility. Consumer grade sites such as Facebook and Twitter are designed more to support social networking and not designed for time sensitive public safety information and emergency communications.

Residents of Currituck County can now take advantage of Nixle by signing up at www.nixle.com . Nixle is a free service and all are encouraged to share this new service with friends and neighbors to spread the word!

For now, Currituck County residents will be able to receive police-related information. Additional county public safety departments, educational facilities and community organizations providing other kinds of information may be introduced in the future.