Sacramento State
Sacramento State Emergency Notification System (ENS) and Clery Emergency Notification / Timely Warning Policy
Sacramento State's Emergency Notification System (ENS) automates delivery of urgent alerts from the Sacramento State Police Department to students, employees, and eligible participants — by text, email, phone call, an audio warning, a Campus Alerts web page, and digital signage — with Clery criteria, decision authority, and testing set out in the Sacramento State 2025 Annual Security Report.
Read the official policyInstitution
California State University, Sacramento
Public R2 · CA
~31,943 studentsEmergency Notification System (ENS)
In the policy’s own words
What the policy says
ENS purpose and triggersverbatim
Sacramento State's Emergency Notification System (ENS) automates delivery of urgent alerts from the Sacramento State Police Department to students, employees, and eligible participants in the event of a campus shooting, bomb threat, hazardous material spill, flood, fire, campus closure, or other event that may cause immediate harm.
- — Defines ENS, names the Sacramento State Police Department as the sender, identifies the recipient population, and enumerates the triggering incident types.
ENS distribution platformsverbatim
ENS can distribute emergency alerts across multiple University-managed platforms, and to student/employee-provided personal contact information, including Campus Alerts page (dedicated web page with information/links for both emergency and non-emergency alerts) and Digital alerts (Digital signage on stand-alone campus kiosks, and TV monitors in the University Union, The Well, Library, AIRC, and Lassen, Mariposa, Sacramento and Tahoe Halls).
- — Lists the multi-platform delivery surfaces, including the Campus Alerts web page and named buildings with digital signage and TV monitors.
Message sequence and all-clearverbatim
In the event of an emergency, Public Safety may send a notification message. A follow-up notification can be sent shortly thereafter, with more specific details of the event and safety procedures, or an "all-clear" message sent when the threat has ended.
- — Describes the initial / follow-up / all-clear message sequence and that the all-clear is sent only when the threat has ended.
At a glance
How this policy works
- When it activates
- ENS issues urgent alerts in the event of a campus shooting, bomb threat, hazardous material spill, flood, fire, campus closure, or other event that may cause immediate harm. Under the Clery Act, an emergency notification follows confirmation of a significant emergency or dangerous situation involving an immediate threat to health or safety; a timely warning is issued for Clery crimes posing a serious or continuing threat.
- Who decides
- ENS alerts are sent by the Sacramento State Police Department / Public Safety. Consistent with the CSU framing, the Chief of Police and/or the Clery Director (or their respective designees) prepare the content, determine the threatened segment of the community, authorize transmission, and provide updates as new information becomes available. (Decision-authority and 'without delay' wording paraphrased from the standard CSU framing; exact Sacramento State ASR sentences not reproduced verbatim here.)
- Timeliness standard
- Following the CSU systemwide framing, the notification is transmitted without delay, taking into account the safety of the community, unless doing so would delay the ability to mitigate and/or contain the emergency, including providing immediate, life-saving measures. (Paraphrased standard CSU framing; exact Sacramento State ASR sentence not reproduced verbatim here.)
- Emergency notification vs. timely warning
- Emergency notifications (ENS) and timely warnings are distinct Clery obligations documented in the Clery Act-mandated Annual Security Report; where an emergency notification is issued for an incident, a separate timely warning is not required for the same incident, and the Chief of Police and/or Clery Director (or designees) issue updates with pertinent direction for safety.
- Testing cadence
- As a CSU campus, the Emergency Notification System is tested at least once annually (announced or unannounced), with the formal cadence stated in the Annual Security Report. (Paraphrased standard CSU framing; exact Sacramento State ASR sentence not reproduced verbatim here.)
- Scope & limits
- Notification may be withheld if transmitting it would delay the ability to mitigate or contain the emergency or provide life-saving measures. ENS targets students, employees, and eligible participants and distributes across multiple university-managed platforms (text, email, phone, audio warning, Campus Alerts page, and digital signage/kiosks/TV monitors). Personal-device delivery depends on student/employee-provided contact information.
ChannelsSmsEmailPhone CallPa SystemWebsiteDigital Signage
Analysis
Reading the policy
California State University, Sacramento (Sacramento State) disseminates emergency information through its Emergency Notification System (ENS), administered by the Sacramento State Police Department. Per the ENS page, the system automates delivery of urgent alerts from the Sacramento State Police Department to students, employees, and eligible participants in the event of a campus shooting, bomb threat, hazardous material spill, flood, fire, campus closure, or other event that may cause immediate harm. The system reaches the community through text messages, email, phone calls, and an audio warning, and it can also distribute alerts across multiple university-managed platforms — including a dedicated Campus Alerts web page (with information and links for both emergency and non-emergency alerts) and digital signage on stand-alone campus kiosks and TV monitors in the University Union, The Well, Library, AIRC, and Lassen, Mariposa, Sacramento, and Tahoe Halls.
The ENS page describes the message sequence: in the event of an emergency, Public Safety may send a notification message; a follow-up notification can be sent shortly thereafter with more specific details of the event and safety procedures, or an 'all-clear' message is sent when the threat has ended. The Clery framework behind ENS is set out in the Sacramento State 2025 Annual Security Report, which the university prepares in accordance with the Jeanne Clery Campus Safety Act and which contains its security and safety-related policy statements, emergency-preparedness and evacuation information, crime- and sexual-assault-prevention information, and Clery crime statistics. Consistent with Clery's relationship between the two obligations, where an emergency notification is issued for an incident a separate timely warning is not required for the same incident, and the Chief of Police and/or Clery Director (or their respective designees) provide updates to the emergency notification with pertinent updates or direction for safety as new information becomes available.
As a CSU campus, Sacramento State's emergency-notification decision authority and 'without delay' timeliness obligation track the standard CSU framing vested in the Chief of Police and/or the Clery Director (or their management designees), who prepare the notification content, determine the threatened segment of the community, and authorize transmission subject to the Clery containment/life-saving exception; the formal criteria, decision authority, and at-least-annual testing cadence are stated in the Annual Security Report.
Because Sacramento State's official .edu hosts return HTTP 403 to automated fetching in this environment, the verbatim excerpts below were captured from official Sacramento State Police Department ENS page text as reproduced in search results and corroborated across multiple independent queries. The decision-authority, 'without delay' timing, the timely-warning-not-required relationship, and the testing cadence are paraphrased from the corroborated standard CSU/Clery framing rather than quoted, because those exact ASR sentences could not be reproduced verbatim from the source here.
Takeaways
Key findings
ENS automates delivery of urgent alerts from the Sacramento State Police Department to students, employees, and eligible participants for campus shootings, bomb threats, hazmat spills, floods, fires, closures, or other events that may cause immediate harm.
ENS reaches the community by text, email, phone call, and an audio warning, plus a dedicated Campus Alerts web page and digital signage on kiosks and TV monitors in named campus buildings.
The message sequence is initial notification, then a more detailed follow-up, or an 'all-clear' sent only when the threat has ended.
Decision authority and the 'without delay' timing follow the standard CSU framing (Chief of Police and/or Clery Director or designees); the 2025 Annual Security Report is the formal policy document.
Emergency notifications and timely warnings are distinct Clery obligations; where an emergency notification is issued, a timely warning is not separately required for the same incident, and updates are provided as new information becomes available.
Policy, meet practice
When this system actually fired
1 documented time Sacramento State’s alert system was used, from the case archive.
Provenance
Sources
- Official
- Clery ASR
- Official
- Official
Tags
policyemergency-notificationtimely-warningclery-actemergency-notification-systempublic-r2californiacsu
Added 2026-06-21Updated 2026-06-21Via ingestion