FELLSMERE — Fellsmere residents have a new tool to not only keep up with what is going on in their city but also let their neighbors know when suspicious or criminal activity is occurring on their street.
The Fellsmere Police Department has partnered with UNeighbors.
com, a free website that provides a simple interface for authorities and residents alike to send notices to the general public.
The program is another step the Fellsmere Police Department, under the leadership of Chief Keith Touchberry, is taking to enhance crime prevention after recently rebooting the Neighborhood Watch and starting Night Watch – an after-hours business checkup by police.
“It’s an effective means of communicating matters of mutual concern with residents,” Touchberry said.
The Fellsmere City Council last week was briefed on the UNeighbors website by the creator of the site, Shawn Andreas.
Andreas shared several examples of how the site could be used. One included a neighbor reporting to residents that his mailbox had been damaged. The notice goes out to the neighborhood as well as to the local law enforcement agency.
If other neighbors – or those in other neighborhoods – also send an alert about their mailboxes being damaged, authorities then know that they weren’t isolated events and can investigate accordingly.
Andreas and Touchberry both said that residents might not otherwise report minor issues, figuring police are too busy or the incident is too minor.
Andreas told the council that the UNeighbors system is not meant to replace 911 and that people who do have an emergency should still call the emergency number.
Late last week, the Fellsmere Police Department went live on UNeighbors.com and Touchberry sent out a welcome message to the 10 people who had signed up at that time.
“If we are telling the community we’re going to do something, we’re going to do it,” Touchberry said.
Setting up an account on UNeighbors.com is free and takes about a minute to fill out with a person’s name, address and preferences for receiving notifications. Alerts can be received via email, text message or phone call – though they can only be sent through a computer accessing the UNeighbors site, for the time being.
Andreas said he plans to roll out a smartphone app after the first of the year to allow UNeighbors participants to send alerts and photos straight from their phones.
Fellsmere Councilwoman Sara Savage said she was happy to hear that plan.
“It’s a little difficult (to participate) until they get it on the phone,” she said, explaining many residents no longer have landline phones, opting instead for smartphones.
Both Andreas and Touchberry stressed that users’ information is safe and secure – never farmed out to third parties for marketing or other purposes. Their information, also, is exempt from public records requests – which allow users to send out alerts anonymously to their neighbors.
Only law enforcement personnel would know who sent the alert.
Messages sent from a resident to the neighborhood go through a screening process, Andreas told the council.
The message is routed to a call center of sorts, where UNeighbors staff reviews it to ensure it is not spam or other inappropriate matter.
The message is either approved or denied within two hours of it being sent. Once approved, it is passed on to those in that geographic area.
Messages sent from law enforcement agencies, however, are not screened and are immediately sent on to registered users.
The system is funded through banner ads on the UNeighbors.com site, according to Andreas, as well as through CopDots, an anti-theft system.
Users will not receive e-mails from UNeighbors.com’s advertisers, Andreas added.
After the meeting, Andreas said he is aware of Fellsmere’s large Hispanic population and is prepared to handle bilingual and Spanish-language alerts. He said he has staff in place in the call center who know Spanish and will be able to review and send out alerts.
Touchberry, too, is prepared to send out alerts in both languages as the need arises. Three officers in the department are bilingual.
In the nearly two months Touchberry has been leading the Fellsmere Police Department, he’s brought back the Neighborhood Watch and implemented the Night Watch program, where officers visit businesses in the middle of the night to ensure they are secured and all is as it should be.
The chief is also working to recover the cost of investigations, which the department had not been actively pursuing. And the department is acquiring trespass affidavits from owners of vacant properties, which give officers the ability to remove trespassers from the land.
Touchberry is also creating two new databases – one for new hires and another to track public records requests.
Looking forward, the chief wants to bring in civilian volunteers to help the small department with administrative tasks and traffic control. Already, Touchberry has received two applications but he is looking for more.
As for the Neighborhood Watch Program, the next meeting will be held Dec. 5 at 7 p.m. in the auditorium of the Old Fellsmere School, located on County Road 512 at S. Orange Street.