November 19, 2005

Neighborhood watch

Cecil Lawson creates ‘Squirrel Alert’ Web application

New technology anonymously alerts neighbors of suspicious activities

By Bea Baechle
Editor

Evergreen resident Cecil Lawson describes a technology he created in his “spare time” as an online Neighborhood Watch system.

The name “Squirrel Alert” evolved from Hanna-Barbera’s “Secret Squirrel” detective cartoon circa 1965.

Called Squirrel Alert, this map-based neighborhood proximity alert system simply automates your ability to inform neighbors that live near your home or business about important neighborhood issues. It maintains the anonymity of the sender and recipient, and requires little investment in time and effort.

Now in its second phase, the new technology is geared to simply facilitate communication between neighbors on their terms. The ultimate goal is to provide another tool to alert the community in case of a disaster like Hurricane Katrina.

Squirrel Alert is not intended to replace 911 and 311 to report crimes. Instead, it’s intended to report the same issues that would be discussed during a Neighborhood Watch meeting.

“This is a free tool that geo-codes your home or business address and places it along with your e-mail, pager and cell phone addresses into a database,” said Lawson, who is the chief information officer for the San Jose Police during the day. He describes geo-coding as the process of converting your street address to a geographic location using latitude and longitude.

Cecilia McNair-Correa of Evergreen warned local residents to be discreet about packing up vans and SUVs before going on vacation. She was burglarized on a weekend when she had been openly packing her van in the driveway for a Boy Scout outing.

Lawson asserts that the system is the first of its kind to combine the use of geographic information to find neighbors and send alert information in real-time.

“When you want neighbors who are near you to know something, you just report what is happening,” he continued. Whether its aggressive solicitors making the rounds on your street, a neighbor’s open garage door or a strange car parked in front of a neighbor’s house—you decide what to notify your neighbors about.

Lawson stressed that this is different from a list server, because it’s immediate and anonymous. The system will even send out a map showing the distance and location of the event from your location.

His neighborhood has a Web site, www.belhill.org, that serves as a forum for crime-related communication, but it’s password protected and available to just the neighborhood, so only a handful of people use it. Anyone around the country can use Squirrel Alert.

Birth of the system
As part of the Silver Creek Valley Community Organization, Lawson was involved in several community discussions concerning crime in the Bellaire-Hillstone neighborhoods of Evergreen.

The meetings reviewed criminal activity and also discussed methods to prevent crimes from occurring in the future. One of the most successful programs used throughout the city is Neighborhood Watch, which fosters communication between neighbors to create better awareness of unusual activities and embrace procedures and tactics to prevent many types of crime from happening.

Cecil Lawson tries to calm down a frustrated group of residents at a crime meeting sponsored by SCVCO last March.

Although the community turnout was impressive at SCVCO’s first community crime meeting in March, local police officers did not arrive until the end of the meeting when most people had left. Frustrated residents, who felt that they were getting a canned pitch without regard to the specific demographics and characteristics of their neighborhood, sent the Neighborhood Watch representative home in tears.

“Attendance began to wane at subsequent meetings,” explained Lawson. Although officers, a sergeant and San Jose Police Chief Rob Davis showed up for a meeting in May, few residents attended. “This is a common trend according to local law enforcement officials,” added Lawson.

He said once immediate threats are resolved, people generally go about their normal lives and feel they have better things to do with their limited time. They typically don’t want to discuss petty crime openly and they tend to feel that local law enforcement should take care of this type of thing.

“I also found that most people really don’t know their neighbors or how to contact them if they need to,” continued Lawson. “Moreover, many people enjoy their privacy and usually avoid the time investment required to maintain a neighborhood network.”

Technology may not solve social issues, but it does provide a way to communicate in a way that is acceptable to most. “This social challenge did appear to have a technical solution, and this is why I created Squirrel Alert,” he added.

When asked if there are any limitations to the system, Lawson said the system may be slow at times, and not all street addresses are geo-coded, which will produce errors.

SquirrelAlert is a nonprofit system that uses donated money to operate. It is free to receivers, senders and local public safety organizations. To use this tool, simply go to the www.squirrelalert.org and sign up. E-mail your feedback and suggestions to cecil95138@sbcglobal.net.

About Cecil Lawson Evergreen resident Cecil Lawson has garnered 20 years of private and pub-lic sector ex-perience, including roles in executive management, customer service, large project management, engineering and engineering management. As the chief information officer for the San Jose Police Dept., Lawson’s accomplishments in this role include being the first to deploy a citywide wireless strategy for Public Safety, the first to deploy an Internet “My Neighborhood” interactive concept that includes local crime statistics, the first in the country to automate Internet police reporting, and the first to deploy a department-wide automated helpdesk for managing and tracking requests for service. Cecil Lawson is currently the CIO for the San Jose Police Department. Given these achievements, Lawson received a San Jose Mayor’s Award called “Pride of San Jose” at Mayor Ron Gonzales’ State of the City address in January. Prior to his current role in the public sector, Lawson steadily climbed the corporate high-tech ladder in the private sector, beginning as a software engineer/designer for GTE/Loral in 1985. He moved into a managerial role in 1989 at Informix Software, where he served as the manager of strategic/engineering services. By 1991, Lawson became the director of Worldwide Technical Support Services for Rational Software in Santa Clara and assumed a similar role at Remedy Corporation in 1994. In 1998, he became a research fellow and director of Executive Services at Remedy. Just prior to joining SJPD, Lawson served as the chairman and CEO of netFuturi, Inc., an online applications provider for sales, service and marketing, from 1999 to 2002. Today, Lawson is also an adjunct professor of computer science and business at Evergreen Valley College, district chairman for the Boy Scouts of America and leadership training instructor for the Boy Scouts of America. He holds a master’s degree in business administration from Golden Gate University in San Francisco, a master’s in computer science from Santa Clara University and a bachelor’s degree in computer science from CSU Dominguez Hills.