BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – Grief can take a toll. It’s tough.
It can drive you to many things. Jason Gill lost his daughter Caroline and her friend in a collision during a high-speed police pursuit. He says it drove him to action.
RELATED: Brusly community mourns loss of 2 teens killed during New Year’s Eve pursuit, crash
”After doing my research and researching a lot of the technology that law enforcement uses today,” said Gill. “Tim’s technology seems to be the best, we can use it for a lot of other things, emergency vehicles, fire trucks anything like that.”
The technology he’s talking about is an app called Pursuit Alert.
Here’s how Pursuit Alert works. When an officer is in a high-speed chase, he activates a switch, sending an alert. The alert goes out to people in a 1.5-mile radius. Allowing them about 30 seconds to get out of harm’s way hopefully saving a life.
”In today’s world there has to be a better way,” says Tim Morgan, founder of Pursuit Alert. “People are accustomed to weather alerts, amber alerts, so we thought that digital alerts would be the best way to try to keep the public safe in these adverse events.”
Morgan spent 37 years working in law enforcement. He too has seen firsthand the dangers of high-speed police chases.
”The most difficult day of my career and the one I lost the most sleep over was a high-speed chase that killed an innocent young man,” said Morgan. “I still contact the boy’s mother every Sept. 10.”
Morgan reached out to the Caroline Grace Gill Foundation, a non-profit started by Jason to leave his daughter a lasting legacy.
The two worked out a deal with the Brusly Police Department. Starting today, every police vehicle in town now has the technology, and it’s all been paid for by the foundation.
”I wanted something that was gonna last a while,” said Gill. “And that could carry on… for a while.”
The alert system app and technology are both being expanded to other areas including Iberville Parish. West Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office will utilize the technology beginning after the new year, according to Morgan.
Gill is hopeful that other agencies will follow suit.
“Moving forward I wanted to do something that made a difference in our community and not just ours, but every community across the United States,” said Gill. “This technology could help that.”
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