Blog: DPS Dispatch

Sherrie Mickelson-Mickelson-Hilliard has lived in her mobile home since 1998 and has felt the impact of Hurricanes Floyd, Matthew, and Florence. However, Hurricane Florence has been the only major Hurricane to cause damage to Mickelson-Mickelson-Hilliard’s home that she and her husband, Rob Mickelson-Hilliard, couldn’t fix on their own. 

Nurses Answer the Call “4 million reasons to celebrate.”  This is the slogan for the 2019 American Nurses Association (ANA), National Nurses Week recognition. (Find out more here.) Many of those four million reasons work in correctional healthcare. Teams of dedicated medical professionals provide juvenile and adult offenders housed in NCDPS facilities with the same level of healthcare accessed by the general public. 

Everyone loves to eat. Now, as far as food preparation goes, that’s another story. Central Prison Food Service Manager Conell Chapman loves food. He loves to eat, and he loves the process of preparation. Chapman also loves imparting that wisdom to offenders and prison staff, not just at Central Prison in Raleigh but to other prisons, county jails and federal facilities in North Carolina, across the country and Canada.

Accountability, efficiency and professionalism are often some of the sought-after characteristics that can be found in job descriptions for North Carolina state employees. However, passionate, strong and caring are the unwritten attributes that also are needed to serve in roles that help to keep the Old North State a great place to live, work, play and prosper. 

WALLACE- For more than 30 years, Susan Johnson has been a resident in Duplin County. Johnson has experienced three devastating hurricanes over those years: Hurricanes Floyd, Matthew and Florence. The aftermath of each hurricane was different. Hurricane Floyd’s flooding in 1999 left ankle-high water in Johnson’s home; however, her home remained dry when Hurricane Matthew subsided. Hurricane Florence was a surprise to Johnson as there was four feet of water inside the home and nine feet of water surrounding the house.

There’s a special kind of therapist making the rounds at Catawba Correctional Center. Her name is Lou Lou. “Good morning Lou Lou,” is echoed every day when folks encounter the friendly greeter. She’s not an official employee, but more like a volunteer who gets paid with an occasional dog treat or a pat on the head. Lou Lou is the facility mascot, a dog serving as a daily reminder of the value of the life and joy she brings as man’s best friend to many men and women inside the fence at Catawba.

The walls are white, the counters are antiseptic and the recliners are set comfortably next to treatment stations. It looks like a typical medical outpatient clinic. But this dialysis unit sits on the other side of barbed wire and heavy, steel electronically-controlled locked doors. The waiting room is occupied by a uniformed officer. It’s in a prison. The long-planned new kidney dialysis unit at Scotland Correctional Institution opened today (April 29), and will be able to handle up to 72 male dialysis patients a week.

After making choices in life that led to prison sentences, participants in the Think Smart Program are sharing their stories with youth across North Carolina to convince them to avoid the same mistakes. 

Have you ever lost a job? Have you ever wondered whether you had the skills/education to find a job? Have you ever simply felt alone in a strange town without a safety net of family or friends? Consider shouldering all three of those scenarios simultaneously. A young person transitioning out of the juvenile justice system may feel the weight of all these pressures (along with the additional stigma that may accompany having been held in secure custody).

During the month of March, five different colleges came to North Carolina to help the North Carolina Baptists on Mission (NCBM) complete repairs to homes that were impacted by Hurricane Florence. During the week of March 10, college students from Ohio State University (OSU) spent their spring break helping two homeowners who were approved to participate in the North Carolina Sheltering and Temporary Essential Power (STEP) program.  The NC STEP program provides homeowners with limited, temporary repairs to make a home safe, clean and secure.  

Governor Roy Cooper proclaimed this week as Reentry Week. Supporting incarcerated and supervised individuals as they successfully reenter their communities has been a major point of emphasis in 2019, with events including the state’s first annual Reentry Summit held in Greensboro in March.  

When the Code Four for a disturbance on Red Unit went out over the radio, Corrections Captain George “Pat” Nolan rushed into chaos. The offenders were screaming and banging on their cell doors. The noise was deafening. At first, he didn’t see the problem. He was told to look up. Only then did he notice the offender standing on a narrow beam on the upper level of the housing unit. A rope made of T-shirts was tied around a ceiling pipe and his neck. He was precariously rocking back and forth.

Whenever there’s an emergency, look for a Department of Public Safety agency to step forward and not only assist but play a role in getting the job done. On March 25, five offenders escaped from the Nash County Jail.  In a relatively short period, probation/parole officers, the state Central Region prisons' K-9 handlers and the State Highway Patrol provided assistance, from feet on the ground and in the air to search, set up perimeters and kept the community safe with the capture of four of the five escapees.

As the largest employer among all state departments and with positions spanning from sworn law enforcement to emergency management, the Department of Public Safety is always recruiting top talent to answer the call of keeping our state safe. Potential applicants can learn about it all in one place this Wednesday as DPS holds its biggest job fair of the year, the Second Annual Public Safety Career Expo at the North Carolina State Fairgrounds.

Unsafe roadways, lowered property values and damaged ecosystems are all lasting consequences of litter. Each year in the United States, 51 billion pieces of litter can be found strewn along roadsides, according to Keep America Beautiful. In our state, the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) spent more than $15 million on cleanup and removed nearly 7.5 million pounds of roadside litter in 2015.