Late alert

A French-speaking woman received an alert on her phone from a municipal police service regarding a murder suspect in the area. She complained to us that the alert was in English only – and a French version was not issued for another 10 minutes.

RESULT: We raised the issue with the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), which manages the alert system used by municipal police services. The system is capable of issuing alerts in French and English simultaneously. However, this is enabled by a check box in the system – and in this case, it was not checked. The OPP accepted our suggestion that this box be checked by default, to ensure this type of alert is simultaneously issued in both languages across the province.