System can be used to alert area about events, such as missing child, spill of hazardous material, or escape from Mercer County Correction Center.
By John Tredrea
The Hopewell Township Police Department is encouraging anyone in the township, Pennington and Hopewell Borough with an unlisted phone number to contact the department to become part of a Community Alert Network (CAN).
CAN is described as "a 9-1-1 system in reverse," said Capt. George Meyer during the Feb. 20 Township Committee meeting.
"The system gives us the ability to contact thousands of residents and businesses very quickly in case of an emergency," Capt. Meyer said. He added that the system includes both boroughs. It can be used Valleywide, or in specific neighborhoods, depending on the situation.
Under the system, a computer-activated alert system sends a tape-recorded message, containing specifics about an emergency, to everyone in the network (or part of it, if that is all that is deemed necessary) within a matter of moments.
The system can be used to alert portions of the Valley, or the entire Valley, about such events as a missing child, a spill of hazardous material on a roadway, or escape from the Mercer County Correction Center in Titusville.
However, the CAN’s database includes only listed telephone numbers, Capt. Meyer said. He urged everyone in the Valley with an unlisted phone number to become part of the CAN by calling the township police dispatcher at 737-3100.
"The dispatcher can get, in about one minute, all the necessary information for making you part of the network," he said.
The captain also noted that phones equipped with devices for blocking recorded messages will block the CAN messages.
He described as quite convoluted the process under which someone could try to modify their blocking system to allow CAN messages to come through while blocking all other recorded messages.

