Dyersburg Police Chief Bobby Williamson places an emergency message into the City Watch emergency notification system. [Click to enlarge]

Computer technology is changing at such a rate of speed that end users often cannot determine which "sales pitches" for new software or programs are actually worth an investment.

That is as true for emergency-services managers as it is with the average consumer in America.

Dyersburg's police chief, Bobby Williamson, and emergency-management director Tommy Gibbons are convinced the $7,500 investment they recently authorized for the purchase of a new "City Watch Emergency Notification System" is one of the best uses that has ever been made of Weed and Seed federal grant dollars. They believe the computer program, which was derived from software employed by automated telemarketing companies, will not only save the city money in the long run, it will also make Dyersburg a safer place to live.

Like its telemarketing counterpart, this program ties the computer to the telephone system and places automated calls at the rate of up to 480 per hour on a typical 30-second message. But instead of making a sales pitch the computer voice begins its message with a warning such as, "This is the Dyersburg Emergency Operations Center with an important message." It then identifies the message as specifically coming from the fire department, police department, health department or some other public safety agency.

The "City Watch" database contains all listed telephone numbers in the city of Dyersburg. This interfaces with a mapping program that allows an emergency technician to contact people in a very targeted area.

"We can select an area on the map by using a computer mouse and tell the system to start contacting people in the highlighted area," Gibbons said. "We can notify residents anytime a critical situation arises and a computer makes the call. An operator doesn't have to sit there and make the calls one at a time."

Another important feature is that the new system will also batch call emergency-operations personnel who are off duty in the event of a disaster of some kind. The system is designed and programmed to call individual departments, shifts, squads and specialized teams.

Gibbons said the system is able to track which phone numbers it has reached, when someone hung up, when an answering machine is reached, and how many attempts were made. If the system is "hung up on" by a resident, the computer will normally retry the call three times. It will leave the same message it is transmitting to citizens on an answering machine.

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According to Williamson, the system has a variety of possible uses for his department.

"With City Watch we can issue a mini-Amber Alert from the EOC building," Williamson explained. "Let's say a small child has wandered away from home or an elderly person from a nursing home, we can call in a specific radius from the place of last known sighting with a description of the person. Additionally, local banks, grocery stores and other businesses can be notified of robbery suspects in the area, stolen checks being passed and other special situations."

Gibbons said other cities were already calling him at the EOC for demonstrations of the new software.