Frankfort KY – The city of Frankfort, Kentucky made use of its new emergency notification system to alert citizens to a kidnapping. The city used the Universal Communications System (UCS) provided by Twenty First Century Communications to rapidly call over 3,000 residents and businesses in an area in which a child and his abductor were last seen.

Citizens responded by calling 9-1-1. As a result, the child was recovered within twenty minutes – before an Amber Alert could be activated.

On Friday, September 29, 2006, police began looking for a man and child after receiving word from the Virginia State Police Department that a father was wanted for parental kidnapping of his 2-year old son following a bitter custody battle.

Although the mother and son were from Virginia, the father was reportedly last seen in the Frankfort, KY area with the child.

At the time the location of the missing child came in, Frankfort Kentucky EMA personnel were out in the field. Deron Rambo, Frankfort Emergency Management Director, placed a cellular call to the Twenty First Century Communications 24/7 Help Desk to request assistance in launching a call-out program to alert area residents and request their help in locating the missing boy.

UCS Client Manager Elizabeth Drake took the call. Rambo provided a description of the man and the child, and a location where they were last spotted. As the perpetrator was on foot, Rambo requested that TFCC call all residents within a two-mile radius, give the description, and ask people to call 9-1-1 with any information.

Drake used the UCS GIS-Mapping function to isolate the area on the map, a 2-mile radius from the major intersection at which the pair had last been spotted. The Mapping program automatically generated a list of all the phone numbers within that radius.

Drake then created a message script giving the information Rambo requested. The Universal Communications System converted the message to computerized speech using the Text-to-Speech function. At 12:03 p.m., Drake activated the program, which called 3,488 phone numbers. Schools in the area were also called and they closed their doors.

Less than 20 minutes later, a woman who received the message saw the pair outside her window. In fact, at 12:24 p.m., three simultaneous calls were made to 9-1-1 saying the child had been spotted.

The callers gave their locations, and police were able to apprehend the kidnapper and recover the child. As expected, the pair had been on foot and had moved into an area the police had not yet searched.

The 3,488 outdial calls and the three incoming calls to the 9-1-1 center were made, and the child was recovered, before the Amber Alert was issued. Frankfort Emergency Management and the Frankfort Police Department had been in the process of putting out the Amber Alert, performing Cable-TV interruptions, and contacting local radio stations when the child was found.

“This is truly a success story. The quick action from the field on the part of the Frankfort EMA and Elizabeth Drake’s calm and efficient performance in executing the call-out program are to be commended. We are very pleased and proud that our system was instrumental in safely recovering the missing child,” said James Lehr Kennedy, President and CEO of Twenty First Century Communications.

Frankfort Emergency Management Agency purchased the Universal Communications System earlier this year through a grant from the Kentucky Department of Homeland Security. The system went “live” on April 30, 2006.

Frankfort Emergency Management Director Deron Rambo told TFCC that the city had been planning a press release to announce the Homeland Security Grant and the purchase of the system. However, before they were able to make the announcement, they actually needed to use it in response to a true emergency. And it worked.

“The UCS system worked quickly and flawlessly to get the message out to over 3,000 people, enabling the police to safely recover the child,” Rambo said. “This would not have happened without Twenty First Century’s excellent service. We cannot compliment TFCC enough.”