NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation has partnered with the neighborhood watch mobile app Nextdoor as another way to communicate with Tennesseans.
TBI Communications Director Josh DeVine said the state agency decided to use the app to build community, improve quality of life, and work together to make neighborhoods safer and stronger.
"We thought this would be a great way to reach more Tennesseans. There are more than 700,000 users to the Nextdoor platform in the state of Tennessee. We have just north of 100,000 on Facebook. So when you think about it, this gives us the opportunity to speak to seven times the audience that we currently have on Facebook on Nextdoor," DeVine said.
Nearly 16 percent of Tennesseans use the mobile app. There are 718,023 members in the state across 6,546 neighborhoods.
DeVine said TBI will use the app to message residents across the state or in a specific neighborhood about alerts or upcoming community events related to the agency.
"If we have a missing child for example and have reason to be believe that they may be in a particular area we can do that on Nextdoor, send a message to those folks in addition to the other things that we're doing. If folks have opted into get those alerts on those mobile devices they'll be able to see that information from TBI about 'hey we're looking for a fugitive in this area we have reason to believe he may be armed,'" DeVine said.
The Tennessee Department of Transportation and Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency are the only other state agencies using Next Door right now.
