Charles Co. town now providing wearable transmitters that can help find vulnerable missing people
CHARLES COUNTY, Md. - One Charles County town is adding a critical tool to help them locate vulnerable people who are at risk of going missing. It’s called Project Lifesaver.
Several other jurisdictions in our area have it, including the city of Alexandria, Fairfax County, Loudoun County, Prince William County, Montgomery County and as of now, La Plata in Charles County.
It’s a wearable radio transmitter typically worn by younger people who live with Autism or older people with Alzheimer’s — particularly those who may have a propensity to wander away.
The transmitter sends out radio signals specific to the person wearing it. That frequency is registered with the local police and if someone goes missing, police can program receivers to that specific frequency to help them locate the missing person.
The transmitter is not a tracker.
FOX 5 spoke with Akousa Meyers. Her son lives with Autism and had a propensity to run away a few years ago. Meyers said she and her husband lived in fear that her son, now 20, would escape.
They applied for and received a Project Lifesaver transmitter in Charles County. While her son hasn’t gone missing since they got the transmitter, it’s given her peace of mind.
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"For me, that felt safe. It felt less intrusive than most other services that would be out there and for me to also know that…at the end of the day, there were other people we could rely on other than ourselves was a huge, huge blessing for us," Meyers said.
Participating police departments typically require that the person has 24/7 care. One department tells FOX 5 it’s not meant to be a replacement for care, but to provide a sense of security. If a loved one wanders off, they call police, who begin a search where the person was reported missing.
Time is of the essence in these investigations.
La Plata Police wanted to join neighboring jurisdictions and add this.
"It’s no cost to them. People who are eligible for it must be under 24/7 care, caretaker, contact us at the La Plata police department. There’s a short sign-up process and we’ll issue devices out once we deem they’re someone who qualifies for it," said Captain Robert Bagley, who’s heading the program in La Plata.
Project Lifesaver’s Chief Operating Officer Paul Balance says old-school radio frequencies are more reliable than GPS, especially if it’s a remote area.
"GPS will get you maybe here to the corner but it’s not going to get you to that kid that’s hiding in that building over there, where this, I mean, you can zero in on anything: a kid hiding in a bed, in a closet, an elderly person in the woods," Balance said.