Whoa there, Post: yesterday’s article announcing the launch of DC Police Alert got it all wrong. Not only does the article seem to confuse DC Police Alert with Alert DC, the real “citywide text messaging system [that alerts] residents about crimes soon after they occur,” that service isn’t new. It’s been around since 2002.

Sadly, the Washington Examiner followed suit and reported that “District of Columbia residents can now receive crime alerts from police via text message or e-mail.” Yes, they can. In fact, George Washington University has been urging its students to sign up for Alert DC for quite some time now.

What’s more, the alerts aren’t just limited to crimes. According to Jo’Ellen Countee of the District of Columbia Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, HSEMA and the Metropolitan Police Department use it to keep citizens apprised of weather and traffic conditions.

DC Police Alert, which is the brainchild of Georgetown business owner and ANC commissioner Ed Solomon, is new in a sense, but not in the way the Post and Examiner are calling it. Taking the principles of its predecessor, Alert DC, it aims to alert local businesses and their employees of nearby crimes.

But even Solomon knows that this technology, a Roam Secure Alert Network, Inc. product, is old news:

“Because the alerts are based on existing technology, it does not cost the city of Washington any additional money to send them,” he said. “It’s just a matter of training the people who use it.”

Solomon went on to laud the new technology, saying that store employees work in insular environments where they don’t always have access to a TV or radio that would alert them to local shenanigans.

The text alerts, which you can subscribe to here,  are pretty comprehensive, and include witness descriptions of suspects following details of the reported crime. However, don’t jump to subscribe to the system just yet. Reports are not relegated to daytime hours, (those who won’t appreciate being woken up at 4 a.m. to to learn that a burglary occurred eighteen blocks away should think twice about signing up) and take hundreds of characters to transmit.

The function that allows users to narrow area that their alerts cover didn’t seem to be working when I tried it out a few weeks ago. And since, as a Georgetown student, I had little use for 2 a.m. reports of bicycle theft on Connecticut Avenue, I relegated the alerts to my inbox.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 3rd, 2008 at 8:27 am and is filed under News, Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.