College Gets Unexpected Help From Incoming Text Tips During Active Shooter Drill

LEESBURG, Va., Sept. 3, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Omnilert today announced their customer John A. Logan College unexpectedly received incoming text message tips during an active shooter drill that helped the school's situational awareness to make better decisions and act during a crisis situation. The college had implemented a service from Omnilert called uTip that lets the community submit anonymous crime tips via cell phone text messages. The uTip service was originally not part of the school's planned exercise, but will now be included in future emergency preparedness planning.

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"We saw uTip as another item we could offer free to students that would help them in their day-to-day lives while here on campus," said Terry Crain, Dean for Student Services at John A. Logan College. "We wanted students to feel they are in a safe environment, and if something ever did happen, then they have a very simple way to contact us and send us anonymous information that we could then act on. We've had the service for a while and fortunately it has not been used very often. It's like an insurance policy."

"During a recent mock shooter drill, I was using e2Campus to send mass alerts out to the campus when we unexpectedly started receiving tips from the campus community. It was scary watching this stream of text alerts come in and know where all the shooters were. At one point, I was hiding under my desk and was able to stay informed because I was getting the tips as text messages on my own phone. Others on our emergency response team were getting the tips on their own phones."

"I am sure the proximity of the mock shooters required witnesses to keep as quite as possible, and to not make a phone call even if they were whispering, so they took the text message route."

"These uTips provided an accurate real-time location of the shooters. It was another tool that helped us do the best we could in a crisis situation. It gave us more information to make better decisions and act during a crisis situation. After the incident, it provided a report with a timeline of the events as they unfolded."

"This was an unexpected lifeline that we encountered during the exercise that we will definitely incorporate into future emergency preparedness training. uTip was very easy to implement and does not require any software or apps to work. It is one of the best investments, and most affordable investments we've made for our piece of mind."

About e2Campus
Used by more than 800 schools around the country, e2Campus is the leading safety communication solution for schools. The e2Campus 360 Safety Suite includes uAlert, uTip, uCall, uSafe, uConference, Hotline and the Multimodal Showcase. The award-winning flagship service, uAlert, is the first and most trusted interactive unified emergency notification system in education. Higher education clients include large universities such as University of Virginia and Cal Poly as well as smaller colleges with less than 100 students. K12 clients range from large school districts to small private day schools. To learn more, visit www.e2Campus.com. Parent company Omnilert keeps communities safe and connected for 13,000 clients including U.S. Army, Bayer, Mazda, DuPont, Philips, and American Red Cross.

SOURCE Omnilert