The Dennis-Yarmouth Regional School District has teamed with based ELERTS, a revolutionary public safety communications platform developed in Weymouth, to launch a next-level crime prevention and school safety initiative. D-Y is fielding ELERTS Campus & ELERTS Lock It Down. ELERTS is a family of smartphone applications that people can download to iPhone or Android platforms free of charge. A version of ELERTS is in the Field for the MBTA Police.
ELERTS Campus is used for direct non-emergency reporting of suspicious or other activity affecting quality of life on the D-Y campus in the theme of, “See something, say something”. The report can include a photo, text, and GPS information and enables back and forth chat between the sender and authorities. The ELERTS Campus report is directed to a console at D-Y and can be sent directly to the smart phone of administrative and public safety responders. ELERTS Campus is available for download to students, faculty, staff, parents, neighbors and any member of the D-Y community who would like to play a role in keeping D-Y safe.
ELERTS Lock-It-Down is an internal communications platform that shares all of the functionality with Campus and has additional features unique to its emergency communications mission. LID is used to keep staff and faculty informed and provides succinct instructions during emergencies.
ELERTS was featured at the Axis Communications School Security Solutions Symposium held on November 8, 2013 at the Axis Experience Center in Chelmsford, MA. ELERTS is social policing meets neighborhood crime watch meets lockdown all wrapped up in one, and we were very excited by the possibilities for application in the school district.
D-Y’s approach to school security was also featured at the Symposium in a presentation by Yarmouth Police School Resource Officer Nick Pasquarosa. Because of D-Y’s forward leaning posture in school security hardware and procedures, ELERTS was interested in further developing their “Campus” app for the K-12 environment using D-Y as a pilot site. The ELERTS team has been to D-Y and we have already done a trial run of their Lock It Down app during a scheduled lockdown drill at the high school this past fall. We were impressed by the potential of both apps and the ELERTS Team learned a lot from seeing their product work in the field under simulated conditions.
ELERTS Campus provides an opportunity to engage our parents and neighbors and most importantly our student population in a next-level crime prevention and school safety initiative that reaches our teens on their terms, through their smart phone, and provides them with a real opportunity to help shape school climate and play a meaningful role in creating a safer school environment.
The initial deployment of ELERTS at D-Y is sponsored by a grant from District Attorney Michael O’Keefe of the Cape & Islands District Attorney’s Office. We are grateful for the interest, participation and support of Mr. O’Keefe’s office in this endeavor to make our schools even safer through ELERTS technology.
Use a QR Code Reader to scan the code and download the ELERTS App for your smartphone.
