Notifiying off duty officers

[slinky145]

Does anyone have a system in place for notifiying off duty officers of an on duty officer or injury or officer involved shooting?

[pgg]

We don't. But we are a pretty small and tight knit department. Everyone has eachother's numbers so word would be spread quickly

[Second Chance]

We have a PD wide email and most officers use the cell phones to check the email.

[121Traffic]

We don't. We're too big to give everyone phones, but we're small enough that word travels fast.

[jmur5074]

We don't.


Same with the above, too big for phones for each officer, but small enough that word travels fast.


But a couple years ago one of our sgt's was hit by a train while responding to a call (forced off the road by someone not paying attention, and then hit by a moving train). He was injured (he was back to work a short time later) and I didn't find out until the next day when I read it in the paper.

[Twan007]

if I don't hear about it through email or a phone - then I read about it in the news...

that's about it... nothing really too formal - I guess there's too many other things going on, and I'm not one of the "needs to know" so I'm not on a mandatory email for an OIS or injury...

[Cidp24]

We don't. We're too big to give everyone phones, but we're small enough that word travels fast.

+1

We have this available to us but it has not been used for this type incident.

https://www.blackboardconnect.com/si...z=110516201749

[Broke Hoss]

On major incident where the need is seen; Chief or on scene Commander notifies; LT's who contact their SGT's, who in turn call their troops.

Of course, we try to notify anyone who would be more closely impacted (family, close friends) more directly and without delaying the official notifications. For less immediate circumstances we simply use a department wide e-mail. Once word starts flowing it spreads like wildfire. With our last ILD, my son was called by his SGT before I was. So I actually learned about it from him calling to check on me before I was "officially" notified.

[ChesCopPodz]

We don't. We're too big to give everyone phones, but we're small enough that word travels fast.

How big is your dept? We have over 600 officers and we are all issued phones.

To answer the original question, there is a phone tree set up following the command structure. The supervisor actually on scene notifies dispatch to send a group page to the command staff. The command staff is tasked with alerting LT's, who then notify each Sgt under them, who notify every officer/detective in their squad.

[mavriktu]

Word of mouth here,BUT,in this community that is FAST. I have had my wife call and ask about a call that was still in progress,cause she heard it from her cousin,who heard it from her hairdresser,who...and we havent even loaded the body yet..I blame it on the cell phone.It pisses me off to no end when you have a suicide or fatalitie or whatever,the family shows up,and the fingers get to working."Oh I will miss him so much...yeah can you hear me ?? GUESS WHAT???".They all just want to be the first to spread gossip.Wish we had devices to jam cells.

[Broke Hoss]

Wish we had devices to jam cells.

THIS! For the exact reasons mentioned.

We were issued cellphones, but the city took em back to cut costs. Now you can get a $20/month stipend towards your phone bill. Only requirement is you gotta use it at work. I have no problem with this & it pays almost half my bill. Others just turned thiers in & refuse to acknowledge they actually do have a cell phone.

[Jks9199]

No formal system, though if necessary, we're small enough that the dispatcher can make calls and get the word out. If stuck doing it, I'd probably do like was mentioned above, and notify sergeants and those immediately effected and have them pass the word.

Of course, that assumes people answer the damn phone when work calls...

[ChesCopPodz]

THIS! For the exact reasons mentioned.

We were issued cellphones, but the city took em back to cut costs. Now you can get a $20/month stipend towards your phone bill. Only requirement is you gotta use it at work. I have no problem with this & it pays almost half my bill. Others just turned thiers in & refuse to acknowledge they actually do have a cell phone.

I would fall under the latter category only because defense lawyers are going after our cell records nowadays.

[121Traffic]

How big is your dept? We have over 600 officers and we are all issued phones.

Over 100 sworn, another 50 or so non sworn with CSO's, Animal Control, Property Techs, CSIs, etc. Your PD is actually the largest I've ever heard of to issue every single cop a phone! That's not a bad deal, especially to keep shitbag free ambulance chasers from trying to subpoena your phones.

I'm one of the officers at my PD that is issued a phone (a BlackBerry no less) because of operational concerns for a special team I'm on. I utilize it to make ANY call that is work related, including to other agencies, etc. I made the mistake once of giving my personal cell to a social services worker once (before I had my PD phone and my patrol car phone was MIA), so SHE could call me back regarding the CURRENT case I was consulting with her on. I made sure to tell her to dispose of the number as it was my personal cell. Lo and behold, about two months later, some other Soc. Svcs. worker called me on my personal cell, on my day off, while I was asleep. She asked me some mundane fucking question that she could have called the PD and left a voicemail about, but since the airhead I gave the number to included my number in the file, it went down as my official contact number. I was livid. The only reason I answered is because I recognized it as a county number, possibly the courts. I made sure to mark down for 2 hours of overtime, and made sure to let that worker know that under no reason was ANYONE from their agency ever to call me again on that number so they had better scratch it off their file.

[McCrackhd]

We don't. Just word of mouth.

[Bob Loblaw]

We don't. We're too big to give everyone phones, but we're small enough that word travels fast.

same here...the word travels SUPER fast.

[JeffW]

We do have a system. Everyone is issued alpha pagers and all of them have an "all-call" feature that allows us to send messages to everyone at the same time. Some of the guys have turned them and prefer to have the message send as text message to phone. It works but we seldom use it because no matter what time of day you send it, someone is being woke up.

As a back up we have phone trees where I notify Lt's and they notify Sgt.s Each Sergeant is responsible for notifying his/her own troops.

We use it mostly for emergency assignments such as hurricane shelter operations, bad weather days etc.