Texas – AMBER Advocate

AI-generated photo illustration of two boys in a swampy forest using a cell phone to find help — *Staff illustration*

By Rebecca Sherman

David Boots, Battalion Chief of the Denton, Texas, Fire Department, was at home listening to radio communications when the call went out. It was 8:30 p.m. on June 5, 2024, and the sun was beginning to set. Two teenage boys on bikes were stranded deep inside Denton’s Greenbelt Corridor, a 20-mile, heavily forested nature trail connecting the Ray Roberts Dam with the headwaters of Lake Lewisville.

Chief Boots felt a knot in his stomach. He knew the area well; the department had rescued hikers who had become lost on the trail before, but this time was different. Storms earlier in the week had created treacherous flooding conditions that forced the closure of the Greenbelt.

Getting the teens out in the dark would be difficult and risky, not only for them, but also his rescue teams. Worse still was the news that high winds and torrential rains would soon be barreling in from Oklahoma. “A flooded greenbelt is not a good place to be during a storm,” Boots says.

One photo showing Denton, Texas, Fire Department Battalion Chief David Boots. The other photo showing a flooded section of the north Texas Greenbelt Corridor. — Top left: Denton, Texas, Fire Department Battalion Chief David Boots. Top right: A flooded section of the north Texas Greenbelt Corridor.

Thankfully one of the teens had a cell phone with him. And the Denton Police Department had access to what3words, a revolutionary new geolocation tool.

A Call for Help

The boys’ day had begun well enough, with sunny skies accompanying them on their morning ride to the lake. But after wheeling onto the Greenbelt trail, bypassing closure barriers, they found themselves in dire straits. They had lost their bearings trying to navigate around impassable, and at times impossible to see, pathways to safety. They had no real sense of where they had meandered, or the danger they were in, and needed to be located and brought to safety quickly. Their lives were in danger.

“They got down into swampy water—deep at times—and muddy, with logs covering the trails,” Boots says. The boys had been there for hours. “One of their cell phones went dead,” Boots continues. “When the sun went down, they were well into the Greenbelt and surrounded by water. They knew they were in trouble.”

When the boys called 911, the Denton Police Department Dispatch Center enlisted what3words technology to immediately pinpoint their precise location—as well as the best route to find them. That data was then forwarded to rescue teams.

In the past, the Denton Police Department relied solely on triangulated pings from nearby cell phone towers to get a general idea of where to find missing individuals when mobile devices were involved. And while they could also request helicopter assistance, such resources take time to deploy. Thus, the location data provided by what3words has proven to be invaluable, says Suzanne Kaletta, Assistant Director of Public Communications for the City of Denton. The app’s accuracy has been “a game-changer” since they began using it in 2022, Kaletta says. It has shaved hours from searches involving difficult terrain.

Harrowing Rescue Mission

Racing against time, Boots led more than 20 rescuers who were deployed to find the teens. “We put an ATV in at the halfway point between the lakes, but it couldn’t get to them,” he says. “Another team in an inflatable boat had to paddle the creek upstream to try to get close enough, but debris blocked the way.” The team abandoned the boat and set out on foot, in the dark and through deep, snake-infested waters.

In the summer heat, the rescuers were “soaked to the bone and sweating so much they had trouble holding onto their phones for navigation,” Boots recalls. A drone crew attempted to guide their way, but the forest’s dense tree canopy below made it difficult to spot them.

Rescuers reached the teens at around 11:25 p.m., some three hours after their call to 911. They were hot, wet, tired, and scared—and their ordeal was far from over. A journey with rescuers leading the way back to the boat through swampy floodwaters and nighttime conditions still lay ahead. So did the storm’s approach from the north.

Everyone was on edge as they did the mental countdown of when it would hit. “We knew we had an hour; then just 30 minutes,” Boots says. “We finally got them out with 15 minutes to spare. It was unnervingly close.”

And this much is certain: Without the geolocation assistance from what3words—coupled with the tenacity and skill of the North Texas emergency responders—the boys may not have made it out of the woods.

The software assigns a unique three-word “address” to each 10-foot by 10-foot grid within a location observed by satellite.

What is what3words?
The a satellite-powered digital geocoding system—available free for first responders and as an iOS or Android app–helps identify precise locations. It has decided the world into a grid of 57 trillion 10-foot by 10-foot squares, and given each square a unique combination of three random words. Each three-word “address” lets emergency responders pinpoint a cellphone caller’s GPS coordinates–even in sprawling national parks and large bodies of water. All that is needed is a cellular signal and a smartphone with “location service” enabled.

What U.S. law enforcement agencies are using it—and how?
More than 400 public safety teams (including police departments in Dallas and Los Angeles) across 49 U.S. states are using what3words technology to locate people. The software is compatible with many CAD systems and public safety communication tools, including RapidSOS, Rapid Deploy, and other software partners.

How can it help find children?
For a law enforcement agency equipped with what3words technology, any child or endangered adult who calls can be found within minutes if they call 911 from a location-service enabled cellphone. This is especially helpful if an individual does not know where they are—which often is the case if they have been transported to an unknown location.

Who created it?
The technology—developed in 2013 by Chris Sheldrick in the United Kingdom in 2013—was created to solve issues caused by poor addressing across all sectors, including automotive, e-commerce, emergency, travel and logistics.

Is using what3words more accurate than cellphone pinging?
The use of what3words is not meant to replace the analysis of cellphone geolocation data, which can paint a fuller picture of where a missing child (or a suspected abductor) has been and may be headed. Its advantage lies in being able to narrow a search to 10 feet, which is valuable in large urban areas (with a density of cell towers), where a cellphone ping can land thousands of feet away—up to 10 football fields—from where a phone may be.

How is the public using it?
Family members and friends of younger smartphone users are enlisting the app to more quickly and accurately find each other in large venue environments, such state fairs, large malls, and other big or crowded events.

What other countries use it?
The software is used by 85 percent of UK emergency services, as well as 50 control centers across Canada. It also is used throughout Europe, Australia, South Africa, India, and most recently, Vietnam.

How can my agency learn more about what3words?
To request free training and tech sessions, contact [email protected] or visit https://what3words.com/business/request-an-integration-form.

By Denise Gee Peacock

Michael Jude Nixon’s middle name is his mother’s homage to Saint Jude, “the patron saint of hope and hopeless causes,” Nixon says. “She had a rough time during her pregnancy with me, and found comfort in prayer,” he says. “Thankfully everything turned out OK.”

And thankfully for those in his hometown of Beaumont, Texas, Nixon has devoted his life to serving people in need of hope—people facing hopeless causes.

“My family taught me to recognize a higher purpose in life,” says Nixon, who retired five years ago as a detective with the Beaumont Police Department, where he worked for almost 16 years and was the department’s AMBER Alert Coordinator.

Nixon now serves in two broader-ranging law enforcement capacities. Since 2020 he has held the role of Region 12 Missing Person Alert Coordinator for the Texas Department of Public Safety. (Region 12, comprising six counties in the Beaumont area, is home to about 500,000 people in southeastern Texas near southern Louisiana.)

Since 2020, Nixon has worked as Assistant Director and Training Coordinator for the Lamar Institute of Technology (LIT) Regional Police Academy in Beaumont. And on the national front, he recently joined Team Adam, a seasoned group of law enforcement professionals tapped for rapid deployment by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to investigate missing child cases.

Nixon’s path into law enforcement followed a decade of doing manual labor for the City of Beaumont.

The first half of that chapter was working in water maintenance for five years, and for the next five “dealing with alligators, snakes, you name it” as an animal control officer. The arduous, all-hours work “was difficult, but important,” he says. “It just didn’t pay enough to help me make ends meet” for his young family, and kept him from home a lot.

Some friends at the Beaumont Police Department encouraged him to join the BPD.

But then came Hurdle One. “Initially, I was provided a job offer, but it was rescinded after they learned I had a GED instead of a high school diploma.” (Nixon earned a GED at 18 after enlisting in the U.S. Army Reserve.) Undaunted, he returned to high school at age 32 and received that diploma. That allowed him to train at LIT and join the BPD in 2004.

Next came Hurdle Two: navigating the traumas associated with crimes against children—from child abuse to sex trafficking cases, which he was responsible for investigating for much of his BPD career.

The way he managed to cope (see “Take 5” section below) now informs his Regional Police Academy training work at LIT. It also has spurred him to continue expanding his horizons for both personal and professional growth. In December 2023 he earned his Associate of Science degree in criminal justice from LIT, and currently is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in the discipline from Lamar University.

We recently caught up with Nixon so we could learn more about his work experiences—and also glean his advice that others could apply to their work lives.

How did your world change after becoming a police officer? Working for the water department and as an animal control officer prepared me well. I saw the downside of humanity in those roles, and it was humbling. That makes you a more empathetic person. I was able to carry that over into law enforcement. I realized that everybody I encountered was somebody’s child, somebody’s parent, somebody’s loved one. I credit that to my mom’s influence. She taught me to be nice to people, even if you can’t do anything else to help.

Photograph of Texas Department of Public Safety Regional AMBER Alert Coordinators John Graham, left, and Michael Nixon, right — Michael Nixon and fellow Texan John Graham, a law enforcement veteran and Region 2 AMBER Alert Coordinator, share mutual respect. “If my child was abducted, Mike is who I’d want leading the investigation,” Graham says.

What were some challenges you faced in your law enforcement work? Earning people’s trust, for one. Also, getting them to talk. Many small-town communities that have been mistreated or ignored by law enforcement have built up a wall, a mentality of ‘us versus them.’ That wall has to be continually torn down by both cops and citizens, Black and White alike. That’s because any national incident of police brutality will overshadow hundreds if not thousands of positive incidents, so it’s an uphill battle that we have to learn from. It doesn’t do us any good to be overzealous or condescending. As my mother always said, ‘You can catch more flies with honey.’ And when someone extends an olive branch, take it. I made an effort to go to park events and parades, to meet people on their level. We may not be welcomed at first—or the second time or third time—but we shouldn’t give up.

How did that affect cases involving missing children? When a community doesn’t trust law enforcement they’ll think they can solve a problem faster and more effectively on their own—of not getting the police involved. That’s especially true because most AMBER Alerts we handle are family-related and not stranger abductions, so people figure an outsider won’t be much help. I’ve had to work hard to convince them that I’m on their side. One challenge comes when children have been lured into sex trafficking. You have about four seconds to make a positive impression before they close their minds to you. Most have been told not to trust law enforcement; to be afraid that a cop will victimize them.

Do you cross paths with some of the children you helped over the years? I see a lot of them quite frequently, but very few know who I am. That’s by design; our child advocacy center is their true liaison. But their parents tend to know who I am. Often they’re people I grew up with. And sometimes they’ve come to me for guidance. I feel good when I can help.

Take 5: Ways to keep stress in check

Dealing with the disturbing realities of child protection work is a major stressor for law enforcement. “So many of us compartmentalize all the things we see,” Michael Nixon says. “We tell everybody that we’re fine when we’re not.” Here is some of his hard-won wisdom.

Share your feelings with a trusted friend or professional. “Around the time of my retirement, everything I’d dealt with over the years was causing me to have sleepless nights, to feel anxious. And I’m not ashamed to admit that I decided to talk with a therapist. He helped me see I was finally ‘man enough’ to admit the issues I was having. That’s why I tell our police academy cadets, ‘If you’re not feeling well, talk to someone,’ Nixon says. “It also helps to talk with colleagues who’ve had the same experiences as you.”

Leave work at work. “One of the best decisions I ever made was never talking with my family about any bad things that I had seen during the day. The boogeyman is not welcome at my house.”

Do a wellness check—on yourself. “Everyone—but especially those in law enforcement—should practice self-care,” Nixon says. “Find a way to step back, take a deep breath, and decompress. For instance, in an active shooter situation, we may run on adrenaline until there’s a break in the action. That’s when we’re supposed to check ourselves for wounds we may not be aware of. The same goes for investigating crimes against children. Check yourself every 12 hours to ensure you’re OK.”

Fortify your body and mind. “I found strength, and stress relief, by going to the gym each day, or working on some property I own in the country, clearing trees and that sort of thing. This kind of exercise can make you stronger physically and mentally.”

Don’t be afraid to cry. “Shedding tears is a body’s way of cleansing itself after a traumatic situation,” Nixon says. “Whenever you need some relief, find an empty office, or go sit in your car, and do what you need to do to lift that weight from your shoulders. Doing that will help you move forward.”

“Most people will experience a traumatic incident maybe five to seven times in their entire life. Meantime, a cop may experience a traumatic incident five to seven times a shift.”

Michael Nixon