Oklahoma City Police Department launches online awareness notification form for residences

The Oklahoma City Police Department on Tuesday described a new online “awareness notification form” meant to attach information about residents or premises to dispatch records so first responders see key details before arriving.

Major Jeffrey Spruill, who oversees the department’s administration division and serves as liaison for the Public Safety Partnership, said the form is built into the department’s existing online reporting system and can include information such as nonverbal autism, dementia that causes wandering, or hazardous materials stored at a business. “That allows [officers] to change the way they're responding. It allows them to have some key information so that they don't misinterpret things that they may see as non compliance,” Spruill said.

The department’s nut graf: the premise attachment is intended to increase opportunities for de-escalation by giving dispatch and officers pre-arrival context. Spruill said, once approved, a premise attachment appears on the call screen in dispatch as a glowing tab labeled “premise attachment” and remains attached for every subsequent call to that address so residents do not have to repeat the information each time.

Spruill outlined the intake and review steps: residents can enter information themselves through the online reporting portal or call a briefing station and have staff enter it; a police captain reviews submissions to determine whether they meet the department’s criteria before dispatch inclusion. Entries require yearly renewal; Spruill said the department will send an email notice before expiration asking whether the resident wishes to renew. “If somebody never checks their email, they may not know and they may end up having to call us and refill out that form,” he said.

Spruill said the form is currently available only in English while initial bugs are addressed, with plans to add Spanish and Vietnamese. He said the form implements recommendation 20 of 39 from the Public Safety Partnership recommendations delivered to city council in 2022 and that several submissions arrived the first day the form went live; the department has criteria to filter out entries that would create excessive, low-value attachments.

At least one board member asked whether renewal could be handled more efficiently; Spruill said the renewal email asks whether the resident wants to renew and that, when the information does not change, the renewal process is simple. Board members in the meeting called the service a positive step for the public.

The department did not provide specific examples of data fields that will appear in the premise attachment beyond the categories Spruill described, and the department did not provide a timeline for the planned Spanish and Vietnamese translations.