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March 10, 2011· scvtalk.com · WordPress (SCVTalk 3.0) · Wayback capture

Not so hot for Nixle

By Jeff — Jeff Wilson

Last July, just as Captain Paul Becker was taking the reins of the SCV Sheriff’s Station, the LASD introduced its new Nixle email/text/web notification system.

It’s no exaggeration to say that the LASD touted Nixle as a revolutionary way to communicate, in real time, crime and law enforcement information to interested citizens. Here’s how they made it sound back then:

Nixle® is now being used by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to send free geographically-specific e-mails and text messages directly to the public. Messages include arrests, neighborhood-specific alerts and advisories, traffic incidents, road closures, wanted persons, missing persons, crime trends, and more. “With the Nixle instant notification system, the Sheriff’s Department can communicate accurate,timely, and reliable information directly to the public via your cell phones and email,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca. “Nixle is a great success story of a public-private partnershipthat enhances public safety at no cost to taxpayers,” he added.

Sounds grand right? I thought perhaps the system was so advanced it could notify me why, for instance, the Sheriff’s Department helicopter was -once again- orbiting my Newhall high density condo complex at 10pm. Or maybe it would text me based on my geolocation when there was police activity in the area. All sorts of neat stuff would be possible, I thought. Why, I could even disassemble my ancient police scanner!

Too bad that since then, Nixle has become little more than a County-wide LASD spam system which occasionally imparts useful information. Most of the time, the Nixle alerts don’t even concern the SCV. The rest of the time, I’m left reading about LASD events or distant crime stories.

Instead of becoming more specific to my location (the whole idea of the system), the Nixle system is even less specific than the press releases and blog posts I used to read on SCVSheriff.com.

At the same time, the Newsroom portion of SCVSheriff.com -which was redesigned in 2009- is no longer available. The Newsroom blog was written and composed by local SCV Deputies, Deputies like Sgt. Darren Harris who was a great resource for local reporters and bloggers. The Newsroom link and Harris’ posts are gone, replaced with a generic link to Nixle.

Those changes -the move to Nixle and the sunset of the Newsroom site- makes the Sheriff’s Station feel a little more distant and the City a little more in control of what gets reported concerning crime in the SCV.

And that’s a feeling I don’t like to have.

 

Comments (7)

  1. KevitivityMarch 10, 2011 at 12:49 pm
    I too have been very disappointed with the Nixie service. All I ever received was non-SCV related LASD stuff were I was hoping for more local messages regarding crime, traffic, etc.
  2. KevitivityMarch 10, 2011 at 2:48 pm
    Looks like this is the specific Nixle feed you want to subscribe to for SCV specific info. I also used to dropdown box at the right to make sure I got alerts, traffic, community, etc. https://local.nixle.com/lasd—santa-clarita-valley-station–los-angeles-county-sheriff/
  3. IHeartSCVMarch 10, 2011 at 1:39 pm
    When resources are limited, I can see why they emphasize law enforcement over reporting about law enforcement (though it seems like aggregating all of the information and giving it some spatial context would be really useful to the Sheriffs, too). Do you think the onus to report falls on the Sheriff’s Department or should local reporters be showing more initiative in getting the stories?
  4. DrakeMarch 10, 2011 at 1:48 pm
    Jeff, Can’t you go in to settings and opt out of the LASD headquarters and only receive SCV Sheriff (alerts only) updates? That is how I have mine set up and I don’t receive the County-wide press releases anymore.
  5. ToddMarch 10, 2011 at 8:29 pm
    Yup. I also had the HQ feed for all of a week, and dropped it quick. I have no interest in the crap going on in Monterey Park. The Santa Clarita feed itself is somewhat useful. It notified me of the barricade in Val Verde today. I’ll say this much…. It’s better than LAPD’s North Hollywood feed. As someone who works in a community facing section of a public organization, I can tell you that there is generally a lot involved today in getting information out. Not because the channels are not there…. But because of the approvals that are required. I’m certain that Nixle, despite it’s best intentions, suffers from this as well.
  6. Petz-aka Saugus SteveMarch 11, 2011 at 7:45 am
    Thoughts and prayers are with our friend Roger Gitlin who lives in Crescent City with his wife Angie.
  7. JDMarch 12, 2011 at 8:16 pm
    Oh come on Petz, unless he lives on a boat moored in the harbor he should be just fine. My prayers are with the poor souls in Japan!

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