Latest / APD Pod Squad / Episode 5; Helene Recovery, October 10; Captain Joe Silberman

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Episode 5; Helene Recovery, October 10; Captain Joe Silberman · APD Pod Squad

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Rick Rice, and this is the APD Pod Squad, Helene Recovery, Information and Conversation.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: Joining me in a few moments is Captain Joe Silberman with the APD Criminal Investigations Division.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Want to point out today is Thursday, October 10th.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Now it's important to note because as we continue to rebound from the storms and move forward, repairing the infrastructure and fixing what Helene broke, the information in some cases may change, hopefully for the better.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe what's closed today may be open tomorrow.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: And today is Thursday, October 10th.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: So for the most urgent, up-to-date, complete information from the city of Asheville, one-stop shopping, if you will, if you have internet access, and we understand that some people do not, go to Asheville NC.gov backslash Helene.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: That site is being updated around the clock with basically everything you could imagine, at least in the big picture sense.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Let's start with the good news.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: So for many City of Asheville residents, trash pickup resumed on Monday.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Feel free to let out a Ric Flair woo.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: I know they picked up at my house in West Asheville, and I am very grateful.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Due to roadway challenges, some crews were unable to complete all their planned routes and will return to those as soon as they can.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now, access to some roads is still a challenge, as we know, but that's also being addressed.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: But here's some more good news.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: The Buncombe County Transfer Station at 190 Hominy Creek Road is now open for residential bagged trash drop-off only, with fees temporarily waived.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: So hours there are 8 to 430 Monday through Friday and 8 to 1 on Saturday.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Pro tip for City of Asheville sanitation customers: if you haven't already, download the AVL Collects app to get alerts and notifications.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's great to have, even when it's not in times like this of an emergency, just on a regular basis, it reminds you what your trash pickup day is.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I know sometimes I've been home, you know, late on a Sunday night.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Our day is Monday.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: It gives me that reminder.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, geez, almost forgot to take out the trash.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: So serves as that as well.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh worth noting, during this disaster, uh, there will be no recycling pickup until the recycling plant is operational, which is going to be a minute.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: So you can use your blue recycling rollout bins as trash carts for household waste.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you want to hold on to all your recycling in there and wait until recycling resumed because you're really that concerned with that, you certainly can do that.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: But if you need an extra container for garbage during this, you can use your blue rollout bins, and that will be treated as trash.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Joining me now from CID, the Criminal Investigations Division, Asheville Police Department Captain Joe Silberman.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Joe, thanks for joining me.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Some people know this, some people do not, but might guess that the criminal investigations division is primarily detectives.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: But during this disaster, the role of you and your detectives has in some cases changed.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh additional responsibilities.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Describe what it's like right now for you, your department, and the new duties you've taken on in addition to your regular work.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: So while the the nuts and bolts of it have changed, I think my overall role has remained the same.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And my area of responsibilities, while I've gotten some unique new puzzles to solve, remains largely the same.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a detective captain over criminal investigations, and we have taken on a couple additional tasks.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: One is missing persons and welfare checks.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we already have a skill set around that and do that anyway.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: We were able to organize uh a larger task force to help us.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: I could tell you more about that.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: We have the unfortunate task of working with a number of different outside agencies to recover remains and do death investigation.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then a big part of that now is identification of human remains, which is uh collaborative between my investigators in the major case unit and uh our forensic technicians.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Captain Joe Silberman joins me, and in addition to all your new responsibilities, you still got cop work to do.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: We've had two homicides in the course of this recovery effort, and they're both in the same day.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we had two homicides in the same day unrelated, and that same day we also had uh somebody walk into apartments off along Shoals Road and douse the place with gasoline.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we were able to solve all three of those.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Took us a little while, uh 48 hours to get both homicide suspects in jail, and it took us a couple days to get a charge on the arsonist, but we had him committed pretty quick.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: Raekon Savage situation was unique and there was a little bit of a sense of urgency with that.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: You worked with the U.S.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: Marshals to get a reward for him.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: The Marshalls are one of our federal partners.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, all our federal partners are awesome, but Marshalls swooped in, really jumped on this, provided us with a ton of manning.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: He was in the neighborhood.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: We were worried he would try and break into an occupied home to go to ground.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so we really combed the neighborhood.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: They were able to produce a 10,000 reward very quickly.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: And not only that, they had boots on the ground to spread that word in the community, since we're a little challenged right now, could or we were challenged communication-wise.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Part of that uh effort, I don't want to forget, Homeland Security Investigations jumped in with us.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: They were helping for disaster relief, and they had a skill set around that, so they jumped in.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: And our own APD drone unit had a really interesting piece of the story.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: They were flying the area we suspected he was in, and somebody approached them, saw that they were law enforcement, and said, Hey, I want to turn him over to y'all.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: And they were not equipped to make an arrest of like a very day armed and dangerous subject right then.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: But they started to get other assets in the area, and Savage was fleeing the area, so they were able to get a drone in the air and track him and lead our units right to him.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: We we fortunately we had a ton of assets in the area, so we're able to scoop him up and get him back to uh CID for an interview.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell, which is important right now, and it's always important, of course, to get dangerous people off the street.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: But right now, people are feeling especially vulnerable in their homes or even on the streets.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: No power, no water in a lot of cases, no food for some people.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so to have somebody out there that wants to do harm, that's just one more layer.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's another another level of loss of safety, uh another one of the hierarchy of needs not being met.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that increases stress beyond the normal, beyond anybody's normal ability to deal with it.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: You mentioned no food.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh definitely has been a concern with a broader community of first responders, but that was actually folded into our missing persons task force.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh that was another group where we were supported by state and federal partners, probation and parole, put boots on the ground with us, with our own detectives.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And we had FBI in the office helping us manage a very comprehensive list that was growing and do background research to get us good data so we knew uh where exactly to go.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: And we were able to follow up with some people who had fled the area and were uh elsewhere, they were safe, and we were able to confirm that without having to send a detective or anybody else to the house because some of the areas were still dangerous at the time we were moving.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: But a big thing was is all of us loaded up with what supplies we did have for each other and started to bring it into the community and give it out.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about your work uh finding missing persons, uh, whether or not they are alive or unfortunately not.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Your list was long.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I want to say it's been like a six-day period that we were operational on the ground.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: We touched about 367 people.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And there were unfortunately, we did find at least one person who we were gonna check on who was deceased.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, I think that's up to two pending an identification right now.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: Most people we found were okay, but there were our five specific stories, five locations we went to.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: One of them was a couple, so six people, and they were in absolutely dire circumstances, stuck in their house due to fallen trees and running out r had run out of oxygen almost.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we had some elderly folks that were without food and water again, stuck in their house due to debris, and they were unable to manage that.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so we were able to get them food and water.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we had a blind man who was wheelchair bound that was in dire situation.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: We were able to call EMS.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And one guy who had broken his leg during this and had no phone and no way to call for help, and had no ride, and so he was stuck where he was, and we were able to get him transported and get him medical care.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: So there's some heartwarming stories during this, but there are also some heartbreaking stories as well.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: How are your detectives doing?
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: They're seeing some things that they're not really, I don't want to say not trained for, but it's not something you prepare yourself for.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: You don't prepare yourself for the situation.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Aaron Powell Everybody that works in CID has been very focused throughout this.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's a committed group of individuals.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: I I think, you know, 2020 hit us really hard, and we lost a lot of our people.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And those that remain are just ultra committed to the work and we're very committed to each other.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: I I talk about us being a team, and uh a team isn't a group of people that work together.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's a group of people that trust each other.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we're all like-minded in that this job is absolutely our life force, and we're all in it like we're all on a ship together.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: We're all in it until we get to port, nobody's jumping.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_00: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Captain Joe Silberman joins me now talking about the search and rescue efforts, finding missing persons, and for that matter, just doing detective work.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Where do we stand today as far as that list that you've got?
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: I know you're just knocking them off, numbers, you know, people's names one at a time and trying to find everybody.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: How many more people still need to be found?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: So on the that existing list, not many, and we've shut that, largely shut that down.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: That was a result of the communications issues and that nobody could use cell phones, so you needed somebody on the ground to actually go to the house.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: We've shifted back to a more traditional missing person investigation, and we do have a number of those, and there are people we're concerned about.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: I have detectives in the field right now running down leads and trying to find out did this person evacuate and they've got a different phone, are they not safe somewhere?
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Things like that.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: But it's definitely a more traditional focus way we're doing those investigations.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: We've made them a high priority.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: You guys have been working very, very hard.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: I've been seeing you and your detectives just coming and going every single day.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: So we actually, in that um, just to meet needs, we've moved COTS in.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um a big one was using our uh rapid DNA machine to its full effect.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we called Thermo Fisher for some advice, and they showed up with a technician, an additional machine, and a lot of disposables that they're just giving us for this, which is gonna be huge for the community.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: We're not taking care of Asheville, we're taking care of everyone.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh any victim of this that's brought into the morgue, we're gonna try and help with identification.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you could uh deliver one message to maybe the the community at large, Asheville, Western North Carolina, at this point, do you have one?
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of different agencies have come to help from states away.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what they should know is we're together in this.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: It is one team, one mission.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: We're in many departments, but we are one team, one mission in this.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Captain Joe Silverman, thank you.