PlanIt Police Blog

Have you ever wanted to send out emergency warnings or notifications to your whole community? Have you ever wanted to talk to neighbors without going to their house? Nixle and Nextdoor are two of the newest applications that provide a safe way to communicate with your local community.  

So, what is Nixle?

Nixle is a company that started in 2007 with the purpose of providing an easier way for you to send out notifications to your community. 

With the program, your department can alert your community via Facebook, Twitter, texts, and much more. 

These alerts can be anything from an active shooter, to a missing person, severe weather, or even a boil water emergency.

It gets information out quickly and the program is free for qualified public safety agencies.

It is the first emergency management system that is integrated with Google to allow for versatility.

You can try the basic features and decide if you want to upgrade. The pricing is dependent on the size of the community.

Find more information about Nixle here.

What is Nextdoor?

Nextdoor is your local social media. It is like Facebook, but it is localized so that you only see things that your neighbors are posting.  

People often times get on Nextdoor to try to get recommendations for different projects that they are working on or need somebody to work on for them.  

The company launched in 2011 and has been useful to police departments ever since.

Seattle PD was one of the first police departments to use it to help understand the worries in the community and try to address them.

Police departments have limited access on Nextdoor, but they can post to community pages, see comments on their posts, and send private messages.

This can be enough to get your word out to the community easily and securely.

While similar to Nixle in that you can alert the community of instances that are out of the ordinary, it is different because it allows you to have personal interaction with people.  

Each individual person does have to verify their address and sign in with their real names so that there are not spam accounts that could potentially ruin the platform.

This platform is free for individuals and companies to use and can be extremely beneficial.

You can get your department on Nextdoor by clicking here.

There are many ways that new technology, specifically social media, can be useful.  Nixle and Nextdoor are two companies that are trying to get ahead of the curve and they are both useful for public safety professionals who use it. Check out their websites(above) for more information.

Keeping up with social media is not easy. But its important.

Download the free infographic below to understand how social media can be beneficial in law enforcement!

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