- A shelter-in-place order occurred on Aug. 2, in which a man fired a rifle. This incident sparked the conversation at the meeting.
- The council and police chief discussed the county’s CodeRED system and other alert systems.
- The chief said the department was planning a publicity blitz to encourage more people to sign up for alerts.
Citywide communications, both in general and for emergency situations, were on the minds of Park Hills residents and elected officials this week.
The conversation, during Monday night’s meeting of the city council, occurred in the wake of an incident on Exter Drive on the morning of Aug. 2, in which a man, Trevor Lancaster, shot a rifle during a dispute inside a house, according to a police press release and report.
Lancaster, according to the press release, eventually surrendered willingly and was charged with wanton endangerment. Court records show that Lancaster had also pleaded guilty to a harassment charge (which itself was amended from an initial charge of assault) from Campbell County late last year. He has a hearing for the Aug. 2 incident scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.
A resident, who did not want to be named after speaking with LINK nky, said during the meeting that a warning had gone out to landlines after the incident. The resident inquired how people without landlines were supposed to be informed if something similar happened in the future.
The resident’s comment prompted a deeper discussion between the elected officials and Police Chief Cody Stanley.
“I’ve only heard really great things about how the police responded, like across the board,” said Councilmember Sarah Froelich. “But I do think that the communication issue, it sounds like it’s a larger issue than just our city.”
Stanley said that there were citywide and even countywide alert systems in place already, but “it’s up to each individual resident,” he said, to get signed up.
Specifically, Stanley pointed to Kenton County’s CodeRED system, which provides emergency alerts of various kinds – weather, crime, fire, flooding and others – for participants via text, email, phone calls and social media. Boone County uses the same system, and Campbell County uses a system called Smart911.
There was also discussion about the city’s Reach Alert system, a mass communication system controlled by the City of Park Hills itself that residents can sign up for. Note: Although not discussed at the meeting, the link on the city’s website for signing up for the Reach Alert system was broken at the time of this article’s publication. The link leads to a blank page with the words “Not Found” emblazoned at the top. LINK nky was able to track down a working link for the Reach Alerts, however, which you can access by clicking here.
Mayor Kathy Zembrodt noted that the Reach Alerts could not be targeted for specific streets or areas of the city; they only sent out citywide alerts.
“This particular incident was only for the neighbors abutting the property around in that little area,” said Zembrodt. “Emergency Management [of Kenton County] takes care of that, and they would have done it to those particular people. Our Reach Alert goes to everybody in the city who signed up, and they wouldn’t have to shelter in place because they don’t live on Exter.”
Stanley said the police department used to maintain a list of resident emails so it could send people email communications, but people (whom he expressly declined to name in the meeting) were “demanding access to that list for other purposes. We had a discussion and decided that it was best to destroy the list and get rid of it.”
Stanley said he would have more details about the Exter incident available for public discussion at next month’s meeting. He also said the department was “going to do a blitz of some sort, trying to get more people to sign up for the CodeRED… We’re going to do sort of a publicity blitz, try to get out the word on how to sign up for it.”
Visit the links below to sign up for CodeRED in Boone and Kenton Counties or the Smart911 system in Campbell County.