CodeRED Mobile Alert App Pivotal to Quickly Finding Missing Child

A missing 2-year-old boy in Morton County, North Dakota was recently found with the help of the CodeRED Mobile Alert app.

According to the Morton County Sheriff’s Office, the boy was reported missing on Thursday, October 11^th after wandering away from his home.

A CodeRED Mobile Alert was sent to residents nearby informing them of the missing child along with a description. A neighbor who received the alert on her phone immediately called police when she saw the missing child outside her window. The quick action of this resident allowed officers to arrive on scene and return the child to his family.

Noting the key role that the CodeRED app played in quickly locating the missing boy, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier explained that:

Obviously [the mobile alert from the CodeRED App] speeds up the whole process of what we are doing. Instead of going door to door with law enforcement… you now have everybody notified of what is going on, and this is a case where it worked out very well.

Missing Children & Mobile Alerts: How Mobile Alerts Can Support Searches

The story of the missing Morton County toddler was quickly brought to a happy ending thanks to the assistance of law enforcement and the CodeRED Mobile Alert app. Tragically, not all missing children are found this quickly. In fact, searches for the nearly 464,400 children that go missing every year in the U.S. commonly go on for days, weeks or longer, and not all are found.

Given the urgency that is inherent in searches for missing children, agencies utilizing mass notification systems with a strong mobile strategy can be integral to:

• Immediately alerting communities and authorities about missing children and ongoing searches – This can galvanize community action and quickly bolster search efforts, likely increasing the possibility that missing children will be found sooner.
• Assuring that alerts are widely disseminated and quickly noticed by recipients – The latest statistics indicate that the average U.S. consumer spends at least five hours per day on mobile devices and that (s)he spends nearly 60% of internet browsing time on mobile phones. Additionally, from 2017 to 2018 alone, consumers’ online time on mobile devices increased by more than 50%. Effectively, these findings highlight the reach and power of mobile alerts – and the likelihood that mobile alerts will become increasingly useful when relaying a mass emergency notification or an urgent message, like an alert about a missing child.

The CodeRED Mobile Alert App: How It Works & Helps Communities

The CodeRED Mobile Alert app uses the latest technology to provide subscribers with advanced, real-time, location-specific alerts and critical communications. Free and easy to use, the CodeRED Mobile Alert app sends push notifications directly to resident phones when government officials issue a public safety alert.

These alerts can arrive as emails and texts (to view) and audio notifications (to hear, for instance, via a hands-free device while driving). CodeRED can also disseminate emergency notifications via:

• Phone (mobile and landline)
• Email
• Text
• Social media
• RSS feeds
• And other channels, outlets and platforms.

The intent is to use targeted, high-speed mass notifications to keep people safe and informed in their communities, as well as during their travels across the U.S. and Canada.

Through CodeRED, community and state officials can amplify their emergency communications, quickly updating as many citizens as possible with critical news, instructions, alerts and more without the need for them to opt-in.

Consequently, local and state agencies can revolutionize their emergency alert strategies and communication tools via the CodeRED Mobile Alert app. Specifically, they can use CodeRED to notify people about various types of emergency situations from abductions and missing children to severe weather events, active shooters and more.

Available for iOS and Android devices, the CodeRED App can be downloaded for free from the App Store and Google Play.

CodeRED: An Essential Emergency Notification System for Local & State Governments

Are you ready for more insights about how your agency can implement and leverage the CodeRED Mobile Alert app? Check out our free, helpful government-specific resources, including webinars, eBooks, white papers and more. A great place to get started is our eBook, entitled Ten Critical Features of an Emergency Notification System.