Late-night robocall causes concerns for Suffolk residents

A late-night robocall angered some Suffolk County residents last week — wondering why police were calling after midnight.

But in what Suffolk police described as a "rare occurrence," the automated notification went out as part of the countywide Silver Alert system — and part of what the county once called the Code Red program but is now known as a reverse 911 notification.

Usually, those calls only involve landline users in a specific notification area and, generally, don't go out overnight, authorities said.

The system is used to notify residents of emergencies, from wildfires and earthquakes to storms and missing at-risk people.

In this case, the automated calls, which some residents said woke them in the first hour of  Friday, involved an alert about a missing nonverbal autistic teen, police said.

"We don't do phone calls for every Silver Alert. They're rare," a police spokesperson said on Tuesday. "But in this case the detectives decided we needed to send it out."

In social media posts on sites such as Facebook and Reddit, some Suffolk residents complained about being awakened by the calls.

One poster wrote: "After I almost had a heart attack from my landline ringing at 12:45 a.m., I checked my ring app and saw people talking there about getting the same call. My landline hasn't rung past 9 p.m. unless it was a family emergency, in literally years."

Police said detectives were notified of the missing teen about 6:30 p.m. Thursday and had Suffolk Fire Rescue issue the calls. Though some residents received calls as late as 1 a.m. Friday, police said the missing teen, identified as a 19-year-old male, was located unharmed on Little East Neck Road in West Babylon just before midnight Thursday.

Since this incident, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina has instituted a policy change that will require authorization from the chief of detectives before these emergency phone alerts are issued, authorities said.

By John Valenti

john.valenti@newsday.com

John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”