Police Chief Patrick Major (right) and Fire Chief Dan Stamborksi (left) discuss the appropriation for a new instant messaging system in Chicopee.
Reminder Publishing screen capture by Tyler Garnet
CHICOPEE — During the Feb. 18 City Council meeting, the council approved funding for a citywide instant messaging program that could be used during a potential crisis or to alert the entire city.
The mayor’s appropriation of $30,000 was approved to be added to police expense account for special services from available funds in the stabilization fund.
Mayor John Vieau talked about what the funds will be used for and explained, “One of the reasons that we decided to put in is because the city of Chicopee, heaven forbid, in a crisis or emergency could really sometimes use a hand in messaging.
Besides working with the Police and Fire departments, Vieau said Superintendent Marcus Ware and representatives from all departments including DPW were included to discuss the initiative.
The program would be available for “pretty much” all departments including City Council, according to Vieau.
He said, “In a case of an emergency, messaging becomes very important and the goal is to work with professionals to try to get the message out to the public in the best fashion possible. This would help us pay for a consultant or firm in order to provide that message in crisis. We are working in conjunction with some of our partners about how to handle certain situations like that but it would be ideal to have an entity or firm readily available, 24/7, to help get messaging out.”
After putting out a request for proposal and receiving three proposals from three different entities, Vieau said the city has picked a consultant and will announce them once the contract is finalized.
Fire Chief Daniel Stamborski and Police Chief Patrick Major were also at the meeting to discuss how this funding can help their respective departments and the city.
Major discussed that there have been instances in the city over the last few years where messaging could have been better.
“We’ve had some instances over the last few years, specifically, from our point of view, high profile incidents, fatalities in the city that we’ve had sometime issue getting messaging out across, maybe not due not to problems on our end, we do have restraints from the [district attorney’s] office involving death involved investigations but some instances at the school too.”
The Police Department does have a public information officer and some of these instances that officer is also on the streets providing police services during the incident while it is happening and Major said, “It’s hard to do a dual role of providing those services while also engaging the public. I know it’s been a concern for the public to not have instant messaging going out, letting them know what is going on at the schools.”
The crisis communication team would be available to help get a message of the city across in a timely fashion.
Stamborski echoed what Major said and stated, “We’ve had, just in the last couple weeks a few tragedies in the city that were horrible, and we need the correct message to go out. We live in kind of an age of misinformation with social media sources and this company is professional at what they do, and I think they would help our cause as a city and specifically our departments and the School Department.”
City Councilor Abigail Arriaga discussed the benefits of this program from a parent point of view.
She said, “I’m just actually really looking forward to this. As a parent of children in two separate schools here in Chicopee, you do see things on Facebook and it gets quite alarming and it’s very hard to get the right information so I really hope that this helps with that and the fear of parents because as soon as they kind of see something posted it definitely spirals so I would really love something like this.”
City Councilor Shane Brooks recalled an incident of an active shooter report at Chicopee High School where this program would have helped.
He said that the amount of misinformation spread during that time was “beyond erroneous,” and he was pleased with the massive response of police officers in the city who reported.
Brooks talked in favor of the appropriation and said, “There wasn’t a whole lot of time to message out. I’d rather have somebody on site addressing an issue than sitting behind a desk typing up an email or a Facebook post about what’s going on. I think this will inherently help our cause to enhance communication.”
The City Council approved the appropriation 11-1 after City Councilor Tim Wagner expressed he didn’t want to approve the funds until he had the name of the consultant and could research their reputation.
