The Abcs of Reverse 911

In the hours following the shootings at the Youth With A Mission (YWAM) facility this past December, two citizen notification calls (also known as Reverse 911) were sent to homes and businesses in the impacted area surrounding W. 64th Avenue and Ward Road.

The following information provides a background about the system currently utilized in Arvada.

General Information
The Arvada Police Department uses a system called “Citizen Notification” from Intrado, the company managing the 911 database for the majority of the United States. This system is shared with police and fire agencies throughout Jefferson and Broomfield counties. Funding for the system is through the Jefferson County 911 Authority Board.

The system is put into action when the department needs to make mass notifications in emergency situations. In the majority of situations, the notification uses either an address or an intersection within a specified radius (e.g., 1/2 mile, 1 mile, etc.) as determined by the agency for the call-out.

Limitations
This system uses the 911 database for its phone numbers which means it associates all “land-line” telephones with their respective addresses. It does not associate cellular telephones with a specific address or certain internet (VOIP) phone services such as Vonage. If you are using a cellular phone or VOIP phone service as your only phone in your residence, you will not receive these notifications as this system does not have this capability.

While there are efforts being made to improve this technology to incorporate these differing systems, it is not ready as of yet, and there is no estimate when that component will be in production.

Receiving Notification
If you receive a Citizen Notification call, your caller ID will identify it as "Emergency Message," or something similar. The call will allow you to repeat the message until you are clear on the information being relayed.

Avoid 911/Non-Emergency Line
Unless you have some sort of emergency or information directly related to the situation, you are asked not to call 911 or Arvada Police Dispatch for questions related to the notification. When the Arvada Police Department utilized the Citizen Notification system for the YWAM shootings they contacted 3,329 telephone numbers in a 1/2 mile radius of the incident. If even a small percentage of those houses called 911 to ask questions regarding the nature of the situation, the Dispatch Center would quickly be overwhelmed resulting in a slower response time for emergency service calls.

Tool For APD
This is an effective safety tool used by the Arvada Police Department to inform a large group of people of an emergency event occurring in our city. It’s been activated on numerous occasions since being introduced in 2003, and will continue to be utilized in the future.