Police Department initiates Take Me Home program
Designed to assist locating uncommunicative individuals
MURPHY (July 29, 2021) It’s a caretaker’s worst nightmare. Someone in their care, whether elderly or otherwise unable to remember their home address, phone number or other identifying data, somehow manages to leave home unaccompanied.
When calls to 9-1-1 are initiated, a silver alert or other mass media notice is issued, often with vague descriptions of the individual and scant details on their condition. Finding them and returning them to their home becomes an emergency.
The Murphy Police Department has initiated a program called Take Me Home that addresses this issue. The program is designed to provide a digital “footprint” of individuals of any age who may be prone to become lost or disoriented and uncommunicative.
Individuals who have responsibility for these individuals are invited to fill out the Take Me Home program enrollment form at http://www.murphytx.org/841/Take-Me-Home-Program.
The forms are easily fillable online, or can be downloaded, completed, and returned to the Murphy Police Department along with photos of the individual. The forms include identifying information that can assist public safety personnel identify the individual and return them home or to a relative or trusted friend.
Among the questions included in the form are those that deal with likes, dislikes, favorite places to visit, their reaction to uniformed personnel, medications, and other helpful information.
The program is free and voluntary, and the information is held in confidence, available only to public safety personnel.
To ensure validity of the information, those persons who enroll an individual in the program are asked to update the information, both of the individual and of the emergency contacts, every six months.
Enrollment assistance, updates to information, or other assistance can be obtained by contacting Murphy Police Department Support Services Manager Kim Parker at kparker@murphytx.org or by calling 972-468-4235.