#63, OC Alerts, and an escaped convict

Two weeks ago, we were actively searching for convicted murderer Ramone Alston who jumped from a North Carolina Department of Adult Correction (DAC) transport vehicle upon arriving at UNC Hospital in Hillsborough. On foot, he headed north across Waterstone Drive and through a residential area. A witness saw him running past a neighborhood swimming pool, still wearing a belly chain and handcuffs.  Shortly thereafter, he vanished into the woods.

As an agency, our primary responsibility is to keep Orange County residents and visitors safe and able to move freely about their lives. Therefore, our top goals were to protect our community from Alston while assisting DAC with their efforts to capture him.

Alston evaded capture for 67 hours before law enforcement officers removed him from a hotel room in Kannapolis 110 miles away and returned him to DAC custody. I want to share what we were doing in the interim and tell you about a critical service that can keep you informed in a variety of crisis situations.

A search for an escaped prisoner requires resources and organization. After establishing a law-enforcement perimeter around the hospital campus, initiating K-9 searches, and deploying drone units to watch for Alston from the sky, I contacted Emergency Services Director Kirby Saunders and requested his help. Orange County Emergency Management (OCEM) is responsible for the preparedness, prevention, mitigation, response, and recovery from all hazards in Orange County. As such, OCEM arranged for the Orange County Campus of Durham Technical Community College to be our command center and began organizing hundreds of law enforcement officers arriving to help with the manhunt.

Almost immediately, the OCEM team pushed out a message using a reverse 911 process and the OC Alerts notification system to many of the people living within a three-mile radius of the hospital campus. The message provided a description of Alston and told residents what to do if they saw him.

Unfortunately, such “push messages” do not reach as many people as would be ideal. When most people had landline telephones, reverse 911 systems could blanket residents within defined geographical areas. Now, almost 75% of people in the US only use wireless phones. Therefore, it is critical for people without a landline to register their cell phones with OC Alerts. Currently, this valuable system is vastly underutilized.  Although the Orange County population is approximately 150,000, only 12,853 people are registered. That is only 8.5 percent!

Many people believe they will receive all relevant messages because they have received an AMBER alert or other safety message that “blew up” their phone. That belief is incorrect. Emergency management personnel can blanket all phones in an area in only two types of emergencies. The situation must either meet very specific and regulated qualifiers such as in the case of an AMBER or Blue alert, or the danger must pose a critical threat to everyone in the area. A critical threat might require evacuation or cause near-certain death if residents do not take immediate action. Examples include dam failures, airborne toxic chemicals, or raging and fast-moving wildfires.

Please go to www.ReadyOrange.org for information about disaster and emergency preparedness. The link to sign up for OC alerts is prominent in the middle of this page. Create an account, provide your phone number or email, and select the type of alerts you want to receive. The system allows you to identify special needs you or your family may have. Additionally, you can indicate whether you have specialized training or are willing to volunteer your skills or equipment during a crisis. You can also go directly to the sign-up page at www.ocalertsnc.com.

Returning to the events of two weeks ago, about two hours after issuing the first OC Alert, OCEM sent a second, similar message. This time they hit all landlines and registered cell phones within a five-mile radius. Obviously, the longer Alston was on the move, the farther away he could be, so they targeted a wider area.

We continued the ground search for two days: 335 members from 19 law enforcement agencies thoroughly covered 1335 acres. When finished, we could say with confidence that Alston was no longer in Orange County. Meanwhile, investigators continued their intelligence operation, gathering and analyzing the information that ultimately led to locating Alston. He is now in a maximum-security prison, and we arrested two people for aiding and abetting his escape.

We are extremely grateful to our OCEM partners – they are unsung heroes. Please thank them by creating or updating your existing OC Alert account.

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