Video: Hundreds Download Amory Police App

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AMORY, Miss. (WCBI) – Recently, a number of law enforcement agencies have jumped on social media, as part of community policing.

In Amory, the police department has taken it a step further and developed their very own, multi-functional application for smart phones.

The idea came after a burglary at an Amory business.

“At 4 o’clock in the morning, these ladies are getting up letting their little dogs out, going and getting their newspaper, not knowing that we had two felons loose in their neighborhood. And we didn’t have any way of notifying them and so while I’m out patroling and my mind is saying it’d be really great if we had a way of making a notification to this area saying, look you need to use caution,” said Amory Police Chief Ronnie Bowen.

When you download the app, you can pick what zone you live in and get instant alerts of what’s going on near you.

So far, the app has been downloaded more than 900 times and its the first of it’s kind in this area.

Chief Bowen says the department wants to stay on top of the latest technology.

“Of course that’s one of the things we’ve tried to do is stay in the curve and not get behind the curve of technology because this is 2015, we work for the people and we need their input as much as they need us, we need them more,” said Bowen.

While police are out monitoring the streets throughout Amory, the app lets those throughout the community stay up to date on a number of things, from providing an anonymous tip, to locating sex offenders.

“Any NOAA alerts, National Weather alerts that come out, if you select that in your push notification group, you’ll actually get that from our app, the tip information, submit a tip, have an option to commend an officer, there is also a sex offender registry on there,” said Lt. Andy Long.

The app is free and available for Iphone and android users.