Campus Police responded to the presence of a bank robbery suspect on campus Friday with their fastest method of reaching a large audience: the audible Wolf Alert.
In the communication room of the police department, a message can be sent through loudspeakers in well under a minute. However, messages through text messages and emails take between ten and fifteen minutes, according to Chief Jack Moorman.
Audible Wolf Alerts are prerecorded, so they cannot be tailored to give the campus community specific instructions on how to respond to emergencies. Friday’s message of “seek shelter” was one of those prerecorded messages.
“The default message is seek shelter and seek further information,” Campus Police Public Affairs Director Jon Barnwell said.
That information is available on the Campus Police Website and from local news agencies. Police are also worked with N.C. State News Services to create Twitter and Facebook accounts to quickly relay information. The plan was approved Tuesday, according to Student Body President Chandler Thompson.
The audible alert system works as follows: first, the sergeant in the field relays the order to activate the system to the communication room at the police department. Second, an emergency communication officer [EOC] chooses a message to send out over loudspeakers, which requires a few clicks of a mouse on a dedicated computer system.
The audible system is the quickest way to get information to those on campus, according to Moorman. When a large-scale emergency, such as the robbery suspect or the earthquake in August, comes through the communication room, an EOC must activate the audible system, and then field calls from people seeking information.
“Phones ring off the hook [in the event of an emergency],” Moorman said.
The primary objective of EOCs is to gather information on the emergency itself. In the case of the bank robbery suspect apprehended behind Winston Hall, the EOC would have focused her energy on fielding calls related to the location of the suspect.
49,000 people are subscribed to text message and email Wolf Alerts. The system cannot handle sending out information to so many people at once, Moorman said, which is why students receive emails and texts at different times.
Since the audible and text/email facets of the Wolf Alert system inherently have differences in the promptness of delivery, both are not always activated, according to Barnwell.
The bank robbery suspect was apprehended “so quickly” after stepping foot on campus, that the “all clear” message was sent out soon after the “seek shelter” message, Moorman said. Since it takes minutes to send out other forms of Wolf Alerts, it was not pertinent to send out emails and texts immediately — the danger had passed.
Email and text message alerts were sent out soon after arrest.
The audible system is a direct result of the 2007 shooting spree at Virginia Tech, according to Barnwell. The mandate for all UNC system schools to have a campus-wide alert system was handed down by the Board of Governors and Erskine Bowles, president of the system in 2007.
Moorman said the acquisition of the system went through a bid process, but could not name the price since it “might not be public
