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FLORENCE In an effort to provide information pertaining to specific areas of the city, the Florence Police Department has partnered with the social network, NextDoor.

The Police Department continues to search for means and methods to improve efforts at crime prevention, public education, and ways to interact with our neighbors and residents, Florence Police Chief Ron Tyler said. NextDoor is a platform for all of that.

NextDoor is a community-based social-networking site for a neighborhood.

Detective Sgt. Greg Cobb said the program will allow police to post safety/crime information for specific neighborhoods.

The advantage is that if we have a rash of burglaries in a certain area of Florence, we can alert just that area of the city about the crimes, he said. If we have a missing person in certain area, we can alert that neighborhood and the surrounding area about the issue.

NextDoor was launched in 2011. Cobb said there are 1,500 local members in the system. To sign up or get more information go to nextdoor.com.

The chief said people are embracing technology more and more andwe encourage people to sign up."

Police Lt. Brad Holmes said Nextdoor.com is a free service to residents. He said when a resident signs up for NextDoor, the system will ask for their address and a means of verification like the last four digits of a Social Security number, last four of a debit card that is billed to the address, or a cellphone number registered to the address.

This allows the company to confirm that you do in fact live where you claim. The information you provide isn't shared or used for any other purpose, Holmes said.

He said after an individual is signed up, the site will allow communication with others in the neighborhood, seek solutions to concerns, sell items, socialize, and keep each other informed about items of interest to their neighborhood.

No other neighborhood sees your posts, he said.

Holmes said NextDoor is a "virtual neighborhood watch" app for neighborhood-specific information about criminal activity.

The benefit to our department is the speed of information release, Holmes said. The system also allows the user to direct message our staff. Since we put the system online early (Monday) morning we have already received more than 20 requests for information."

As opposed to getting misinformation from social media about crime, we want residents to utilize this for accurate, up-to-date information, Tyler said.

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NextDoor offers specific information for neighborhoods - Times Daily