Foothills residents now have another outlet in helping in the fight against rural crime and mischief in their communities.

Block Talk is now available in the Foothills and is a more in depth version of other social media groups. The phone app allows users to select the geographical areas they wish to follow and receive real time notifications on categories such as urgent safety alerts, non-urgent crime, lost persons, lost pets, Block Board bulletin board, and community associations.

Michael Murray, President and Founder of Block Talk, created the app after an incident involving a child happened in his Calgary community while he was president of his community's association and he was not informed of the incident until 10 hours later.

He says the app takes people's identity into consideration.

"It's important to note that when you communicate in the categories of urgent safety alert and non-urgent crime your username actually shows up as anonymous. Block Talk took the approach that those two categories should be anonymous so you're not talking about the 'wrong criminal', if you will, and then there should be no resistance to be using the app."

Murray describes the app as the modern day Neighbourhood Watch and hopes to see it lead to a decrease in criminal activity for local communities.

"Maybe it will have the scare crow effect, so if a criminal sees an active community when it comes to either just talking about crime, talking about crime that has taken place, or just sharing statistics, all that kind of stuff... then maybe it'll have the scarecrow effect of criminals saying 'hey, maybe we should just stay away from this area because they seem to be active and watching out for each other."

The app is not connected to emergency services and Murray stresses the first thing a resident should do in an emergency is contact 911 before using the app.

Block Talk can be downloaded for free in the App Store and Google Play.

Questions, comments, or story ideas? Email us at news@okotoksonline.com