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Apartments Gate Codes

By Wanda Echols posted 06-24-2015 14:46

  

There are several gated  apartment complexes in our County. We maintain an apartment manual that includes:
    
         The apartments name, address and gate codes.

As we all know, apartment complexes tends to change the name of the complex every (2) years or less. The apartment gate codes seems to change every (3-4 months). 

The change in information does not make its way to the communication center so that we can provide the best service to the first responders and the public.

Can anyone let me know if you have something in place that requires the apartment complexes to provide updated informaton to the police department or anything so that we can be provided with the apartment complexes updates as the changes occur?

Help !
Thanks
     

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Cari Zanella
07-01-2015 16:30

Hi Wanda. We tried for ages to resolve the issue of gatecodes until we landed on our current solution. For example, do we only accept gatecode changes from management, or do we take it from patrol who might have borrowed it from a tenant who is moving out soon? It is difficult to mobilize gated communities to a single agreement. Who in our agency is able to maintain the database? And on and on.......so we just added it to the emergency checklist, and now our operators ask it in every call. It seems to be working well, and only takes a moment to obtain.

John Halaychik
06-26-2015 15:00

Wanda, when I worked in the Central Florida area we faced this issue as well. What we suggested was bi-annually, a generic form asking for updated contact information AND the gate code be provided (usually January and July) so we accomplished two things at the same time.
Another thing you may consider is asking the complexes to set the gate code for emergency personnel to a specific code, but uniform to all complexes within the jurisdiction. We did not use 9110 or 0911 for obvious reasons.