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Hurricane prep is available in the palm of your hand

Pinellas Park Police use technology to get the latest hurricane training.

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. — Being prepared for a hurricane is not limited to your own personal needs. Businesses and school districts often have extra training and manuals for employees to know exactly what to do. 

And it's good to know first responders also brush up on their training for hurricane season. 

"Being in Pinellas County, being in Florida, it's always a real possibility that we would be affected by a tropical storm or a hurricane," Captain Adam Geissenberger said as he showed how officers with the Pinellas Park Police Department train each year for hurricane preparedness. 

Through a program called Power DMS, they have everything they need, either on their computer or their phone. 

"In the past, you'd have calls that would wait because our officers weren't available because they were in a classroom, they were training," he said. 

Now, all that training is done as each officers find time out in the field.

"Which increases their uptime, their productivity, their efficiency and their amount of time in the field with the community," said Capt. Geissenberger.

Geissenberger says the department has been using this technology for a couple of years now and each year, they update the hurricane training with the latest information. 

"Every year, you'd have to go look, what's my job, I forgot," he said. "I changed assignments, where do I belong? Now with Power DMS, I'm going to tell you what it is every June 1st when we put it out."

Captain Geissenberger says the technology has proven invaluable not only to the department, but the entire community.  

"First and foremost, and the most important thing to us is keeping the community safe, and we can do that with our officers being on the street, being visible and having the information readily available so they can answer and provide information when asked," he added. 

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