Chesapeake staff brief council on Safety Connect employee SOS app

Chesapeake city staff demonstrated Safety Connect to the City Council, describing a new employee-focused emergency app that will be pushed to city-issued phones and offered to personal devices.

Deputy City Manager Bob Geist opened the briefing and turned the presentation over to Bobby Gellamine, the city’s security program manager, who described the app as an Everbridge implementation for staff use. "The employee would hit the SOS button to activate the process in which notifications would go out," Gellamine said, adding that the activation provides GPS location and two minutes of live audio and video from the employee’s device.

Gellamine said the app will be deployed automatically to city-issued phones via IT and offered to employees with personal devices; employees who decline will be asked to sign a waiver acknowledging the offer. Onboarding requires permission for location services, a phone number and a PIN, and uses single sign-on on issued devices. Staff emphasized that training will accompany rollout and that the SOS function is intended only for emergencies.

Council members asked about accountability and monitoring. Gellamine said the system supports check-ins and polling so the city can query employees on safety status and direct follow-up resources if someone does not confirm. He said incidents will be monitored through the real-time crime and information center and by the staff and department heads who receive the notification.

Council and staff also discussed longer-term integration with badge access. Gellamine and Geist said not all facilities have badge-controlled doors yet and that more granular badge-in/badge-out coverage is a later phase; when available, that data could feed the Emergency Operations Center and a situational dashboard.

Staff said the current rollout plan focuses first on testing with department heads, then a phased rollout to general employees over the coming months; training materials and instructions have been prepared and shared with key departments for testing.