GREENFIELD — Less than two weeks after a more than three-hour foot pursuit resulted in a temporary shelter-in-place at the Discovery School at Four Corners and an alleged attempted carjacking and assault, the Police Department is considering its use of the city’s reverse 911 system.

Officials with the Greenfield Police and Fire departments weighed the system’s pros and cons during a Public Safety Commission meeting on Wednesday after Precinct 2 City Councilor Rachel Gordon asked that the Police Department or Mayor’s Office notify residents during future threats or emergencies. The topic of stationing a school resource officer in Greenfield’s public schools was also discussed in an effort to ramp up security measures.

“A [traffic] stop took place ... A couple of the individuals that were in a car fled on foot,” Police Chief Todd Dodge told the commissioners, recounting the Sept. 13 incident. “They were eventually taken into custody, but in between, the male individual had, at the very least, accosted individuals, and to the extent of possible carjackings and assaults and things of that nature. In response to that, the city councilor asked about our reverse 911 system. I said, ‘Well, I’ll be completely honest with you, under normal protocols, it’s just not something we would usually think of.’”

The incident concluded with Greenfield Police arresting Sebret Sanchez, 31, of Springfield, on Sunrise Avenue on two active warrants, as well as charges of carjacking, attempted kidnapping, assault and battery on a person older than 60, unarmed robbery, assault and battery, witness intimidation and vandalism. Additionally, State Police arrested another one of the passengers who allegedly fled the Bernardston Road traffic stop, Chloe O’Malley, 25, of Turners Falls, on a warrant, as well as charges of assault and battery on a police officer, resisting arrest, carrying a dangerous weapon and possession of a Class B drug.

Dodge noted that since the chase occurred in close proximity to a day care, use of an emergency broadcast system that would send text and email alerts to nearby residents in the event of an emergency would go a long way toward keeping community members safe in future scenarios.

Fire Chief Robert Strahan explained that the city has had a reverse 911 system — available for use by the Mayor’s Office, Police Department, Department of Public Works and Fire Department — for roughly 20 years. He said although the program is available to city employees, the decision to send notifications to the public during an emergency must be made carefully, as its use in the wrong scenario can be counterintuitive.

Strahan recalled a past instance in which the Fire Department sent a reverse 911 alert notifying neighbors to look out for a missing juvenile in the woods of a neighboring community. He noted that broadcasting the alert caused neighbors to scour the woods looking for the child, throwing off the scent for K-9 units trying to track the juvenile

“It is a powerful tool, but needs to be used correctly in the right format, and that has been part of several incidents where the reverse 911 system actually backfired because it wasn’t emergent,” Strahan said. “They wanted to get the message out, and didn’t really think of the independent consequences of the message.”

Stressing the importance of using the system judiciously, Strahan also noted that the reverse 911 system could potentially overwhelm the dispatch center with calls. He added that for appropriate uses of the city’s alert system, it has the capability to be used for social media alerts, and can be further localized to a particular region.

“You can set it up with Google, Facebook, Twitter — there’s a bunch of capabilities with it,” Strahan added. “We haven’t expanded this, but we have used it a few times for different emergencies, like flooding events. We put a message out that says, ‘Hey, listen, there’s a potential risk coming your way. You should be aware of it.’ It’s a powerful tool.”

In response, Dodge noted that although the incident that caused the chase — individuals fleeing from a vehicle during a State Police traffic stop — would not solely warrant a reverse 911 alert, the events that followed it would.

After mulling over the ways in which enhanced alert communications could better assist schools with lockdowns or shelter-in-place situations, Dodge recalled the School Committee’s hesitancy to station a school resource officer in the school district in the wake of a local FBI investigation involving a Greenfield resident’s social media posts.

“I want to make this clear to the public — we’re not proposing to have a school resource officer. That’s not why it’s on the agenda, but me and some of the other commissioners felt like the word gets tossed around a lot,” Public Safety Commissioner David Moscaritolo said. “There are lots of conversations around it, either negative or positive, and we feel like we have a responsibility as public safety commissioners to look at the bigger picture of school safety.”

Dodge explained that, in his view, many of the School Committee’s concerns with stationing an SRO in the district stem from “political reasons.” He said the department simply hopes to act as a security force for the city’s schools and is willing to compromise with the committee for the sake of student safety.

“My vision of it is more of a security job. Whereas, I would like to know someone’s in there, checking doors throughout the day, walking the perimeters throughout the day, encountering individuals trying to come into the school to make sure their purpose is valid — not getting into the lives of the students. That’s not my vision,” Dodge said. “I don’t want to be seen as someone who didn’t do enough when this tragic event takes place in our city.”

Anthony Cammalleri can be reached at acammalleri@recorder.com or 413-930-4429.