Pending Alerts

How to handle email received from CrimeDex stating that an alert is pending approval

Instructions

CrimeDex members will publish alerts regarding criminal activity. These alerts are relatively simple (as opposed to posting entire crime information) and only require a subject, general details, and contact information for the agency posting the alert. After inputting that information, the user will select a distribution area

• Group-wide: At the lowest level, they can select any of the CrimeDex groups of which they are members.  This requires no additional permission.  Group members have to choose to receive alert messages from other group members.

• Region-wide: Regions of the United States and Canada (imagine the U.S. divided into 12 regions).

• State-wide: Individual states in the United States and Canada

• Nation-wide: All of the United States and/or Canada

Before approving an alert please be sure to have a look at the distribution. Two things to look out for

1. Law Enforcement Restricted: It’s very rare that an alert should be LE Restricted. Typically this is a user error. They don’t realize that the alert will only go to LE, not our other members.

2. It’s checked off for United States, but also smaller regions, such as Southwest or CA. This is probably another user error. They don’t realize that checking off United States will send it to all CrimeDex members, not just to the SW Region or to CA.

Both of these are common user errors and when we see them we need to slow down and contact the originator to verify that they intended LE Only, and do they want to send it to all members in the US or just the Southwest region.