The Pike County Sheriff’s Office is offering a new smartphone app and updated website to the public. 

Sheriff Russell Thomas said the app will help the PCSO communicate with the public in addition to providing access to information from the sheriff’s office right in the palm of the hand. 

“We hope this opens another line of communication with the public,” Thomas said. :We also want to use the app to help educate the public about the sheriff’s office and the ways we serve the community.” 

The PCSO’s app was developed by TheSheriffApp.com, a brand of OCV, LLC, which specializes in mobile app development for sheriff’s offices and public safety organizations across the country. 

Users of the app can access the following information with a few touches on the phone: 

• Sheriff’s welcome
• Inmate and jail information
• Registered sex offenders
• School safety
• Pistol permits
• Cyber safety
• Submit a crime tip
• Contact the sheriff’s office and more. 

“More than 80 percent of people in the United States use smartphones as their primary means of communication,” OCV Partner and CRO Kevin Cummings said. “Mobile apps offer agencies a better way to alert, inform and prepare the public. Apps allow public safety agencies the ability to reach and serve their citizens where they are: their smartphones.”

Thomas said the app is a tool that can benefit the public. 

“We’ve updated our website,” Thomas said. “But, the app is new and allows people to access all of the information on our website on their phone. It’s a way for us to stay in touch with the community. It will allow us to get information out to the community and they can access it right from their phone. That can be done in emergency situations or for something as simple as a road closing. This is just another way for us to stay in touch with the public.”