Text number to sign up for Police Jury’s new alert system

Note: The story initially read to dial number. It should be text.

Take out your cell phone, text 888777 and then punch in your zip code.
You are now signed up for the Vermilion Parish Police Jury’s new alert system. It is that easy.
Homer Stelly, with the Vermilion Parish Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, is traveling the parish on behalf of the police jury to show just how easy it is to sign up for the free service.
Stelly attended the Abbeville City Council and Maurice Board of Aldermen meetings last week to explain the new system.
“I am not here to sell you anything,” Stelly said. “The Police Jury has already purchased the service.”
The Police Jury recently signed a three-year contract with Nixle to provide the alerts. The system, which is utilized by more than 7,200 government agencies across the United States, will send alerts for countless circumstances.
“It will alert citizens of any type of emergency,” Stelly said. “It can be a hurricane, flood, active shooter, chemical spill, a major wreck, anything.”
Alerts can come via a mobile device, home phone and e-mail. Residents can sign up for free through the police jury’s website, www.vermilionparishpolicejury.com or www.nixle.com.
Those who sign up for the service must live in Vermilion Parish.
“If you have a Lafayette zip code,” Stelly said, “ you can’t sign up because the Police Jury signed the contract to put in Vermilion Parish Zip Codes.”
More than 1,600 residents have already signed up. That is well beyond the 320 who used the Police Jury’s previous system, CodeRed, which operated for the last seven years.
“This system is a lot more user friendly,” Stelly said.
Councilman Brady Broussard Jr. signed up in a matter of seconds during the Abbeville Council meeting.
“It’s that simple,” Stelly told him. “We want to get as many people to sign up as we can because the Police Jury is already paying for it.
“We don’t want it to be for nothing.”