LINCOLN — Unruly Husker fan, beware. Your secretly irritated bleacher-mates may be tattling on you with their thumbs during Nebraska football games next fall.
The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Police Department is now accepting citizen crime reports via text message, a service upgrade that ultimately will aid in improving security at its more populated events where a traditional phone call isn't as practical.
So those Memorial Stadium patrons who've been somewhat deterred, by crowd noise or general timidity, to contact police now have a new way, one that's quick and subtle for the everyday cell phone user.
The hope is that the addition of a new medium will keep fewer disturbances, and medical emergencies, from being unreported, according to UNL Police Chief Owen Yardley.
“We don't want to switch everything over to text. We're still going to get the calls,” Yardley said. “But we'll use the text messages as a supplement for those times when you're in large venues, when it's hard to hear, hard to communicate or you need to be discrete.”
Campus police dispatchers will accept the texts from the public when events aren't going on. The university-wide texting option may be a first among large institutions' police departments.
“I'm not aware of any others,” Yardley said.
But several collegiate stadiums feature this new-age complaint hotline, where fans can correspond directly with event staff to document nearby problems.
At the University of Florida, fans could text police at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium for the first time during the school's spring game April 18.
Officers would receive texts, focus stadium cameras on an area and if necessary, send in officers to respond to the situation, according to University of Florida Police Lt. Robert Wagner. It worked well, Wagner said.
The process will be similar at Nebraska. And ideally, assuming that Nebraska's campus police build up enough data on game days, commanding officers ultimately will be able to better position personnel around the stadium where incidents are more frequent, Yardley said.
Using technology provided by In Stadium Solutions, officers will have access to the texts well after they initially pass by the eyes of dispatchers. The messages will be logged and stored. They won't be anonymous either, which is key for officers who may want to correspond with the texter for more information.
The new system's first big test will be on July 4, when Larry the Cable Guy performs in front of about 50,000 at Memorial Stadium. Still new, it may be difficult to evaluate even after that event, Yardley said.
By the time the football season starts, Yardley and Nebraska athletic department officials hope to have publicized the text message option well enough for it to be useful for fans on Saturdays.
Memorial Stadium attendees have always been able to call 472-FANS to reach police, though that number's usage has never been incredibly high, according to Nebraska Assistant Athletic Director Butch Hug.
Hug said plans are to display text message instructions on signs throughout the stadium and in the football team's annual fan guides. The new video boards occasionally will showcase the information as well.
Contact the writer:
402-473-9585, jon.nyatawa@owh.com
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