Sheriff’s Office releases new app

BLACKFOOT — Want to stay better informed about what the Sheriff’s Office is doing? There’s an app for that.

The Bingham County Sheriff’s Office just released an app it hopes to use to better communicate with the people in the county. The app, called Bingham County Sheriff Office, is free and available on Apple and Android devices.

“It’s free. It’s informative. You have basically everything that’s on our website on there. It’s a fast, easy way to communicate with lots of people,” Bingham County Chief Deputy Jeff Gardner said.

The app gives users easy access to inmate information, the sex offender registry, animal control, COVID-19 resources and outstanding warrants. It also allows users to submit anonymous tips to the Sheriff’s Office.

“That one, to me, is a big one for our detective’s division and patrol too,” Gardener said. 

The app allows the user to not only send a written tip, but it also allows them to send the GPS location of where the incident took place and photos of the incident.

While the app does ask for the name, email and phone number of the user, that information is all optional. Gardner explained that the sheriff’s office does not have access to any of the metadata, such as IP addresses, the app collects when a user submits a tip.

“We will have no ability to see who that (tipster) is,” he said.

Gardner said he hopes the app will also be beneficial to Bingham County residents by allowing them to receive emergency alerts through the app.

“If we have a natural disaster if we have a flooding or anything like that. Or if we have a crash that blocks the interstate or major highway. We can immediately put that out on this. It alerts your app, it hits our social media at the same time,” He said.

With the app only recently being released, Bingham County deputies are still receiving training on how and when to use the alert function. Because of this, that function has not been used much yet. However, Gardner said users should start to see more alerts in the coming weeks.

Another function that isn’t quite ready yet is the Warrants section. Gardner explained that the Sheriff’s Office is migrating to a new digital records system, and when that process is complete the Warrants section in the app will allow users to see all active Bingham County warrants.

He said by June, the Warrants section of the app will be up and running.

The Sheriff’s Office purchased the app through a company called The SheriffApp.com. The company has developed apps for dozens of sheriff’s offices throughout the United States.

“We’re the first office in the State of Idaho to have this,” Gardner said.

He said the cost to the Bingham County Sheriff’s Office for the initial set-up and three years of service was around $32,000. After that, maintenance on the app will cost between $2,500 to $5,000 a year depending on how much maintenance is needed.

“The charge back to the county is truly population-based. So, like in Florida, they have some huge accounts where they have hundreds of thousands of people downloading the app. So it costs them more to function. In Bingham County, if we have 5,000 people download the app, it’s simpler for them to maintain and cheaper,” Gardner explained.