Full Notification

MEDIA RELEASE / COMMUNITY ALERT
CITY of SAN MATEO POLICE DEPARTMENT
200 Franklin Parkway, San Mateo, CA 94403
www.cityofsanmateo.org

SMPD is grateful to announce an exciting change to Next Door that will strengthen our partnership with our San Mateo neighbors and provide you with one more way to communicate directly with your police department. The Chief of Police and the San Mateo City Manager’s office have worked closely with the Next Door staff over the last few months and are now pleased to announce the new “Share with Police” feature on Next Door. Previously the San Mateo Police Department was only able to post messages in the “Crime & Safety” section of Next Door, but was unable to monitor or even see “Crime & Safety” postings created by our Next Door neighbors. This often led to a wealth of misinformation circulating in and beyond our Next Door community and left us without valuable crime fighting and quality of life information in our neighborhoods!

Now, using the new “Share with Police” feature, when one of our neighbors creates a post in the “Crime & Safety” section of Next Door, they will be given the option to share that posting and its content with the San Mateo Police Department. This will finally build the missing bridge in our communications with our Next Door neighbors and you can become our eyes and ears, keeping with the core tenets of Neighborhood Watch - helping your beat cops partner with you and stay “in the know” of those crime and safety issues, or simply the quality of life issues that arise in your neighborhood. Those messages will be closely monitored and forwarded to the appropriate SMPD Area Lieutenant so they can work directly with those neighborhoods to remedy those issues as the need arises and ensure your patrol officers know what to watch for in protecting and serving your neighborhoods!

We are excited to see this new feature go live as our partnership with Next Door and our community continues to grow. With more than 9,000 of our residents already using Next Door, this will surely prove to be a huge building block for our communication with not only those neighbors, but with community members still to come because more and more people join Next Door every day. We also are working closely with our newly appointed Neighborhood Watch Board of Directors to utilize Next Door as the next generation communication platform for our 300+ Neighborhood Watch Block Captains and their neighbors.

Please remember that Next Door is still NOT a means of reporting emergencies to SMPD and to continue to use 911 or (650)522-7700 to report non-emergencies. We have already seen several people in just these first few days utilize the “Share with Police” feature and we look forward to building a stronger bond with Next Door and the opportunity to make a bigger impact in the lives of our Next Door neighbors.

For more information on joining Next Door, go to: https://nextdoor.com

To identify your SMPD Area Lieutenant, go to: http://www.cityofsanmateo.org/DocumentCenter/View/38195

Get to know your neighbors and make your community safer! For information on Neighborhood Watch, go to: http://www.cityofsanmateo.org/DocumentCenter/View/38195