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Hours after Atwater's probation was revoked, N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper announced that he talked with Secretary Theodis Beck of the N.C. Department of Correction and Community Corrections Director Robert Guy about the Correction Department feeding probation information into an existing State Bureau of Investigation database. This would allow law enforcement officers to learn immediately whether someone they're arresting is on probation and then contact that person's probation officer.

"Probation and parole is having a problem with their own communication system," Cooper said. "Law enforcement is frustrated."

Officials with the Correction Department and SBI met Wednesday and learned that the SBI database could handle data on probationers and parolees, according to a statement from George Dudley, a spokesman for the Correction Department. Dudley indicated that the probation system will begin plugging information into the SBI system.

At the hearing Thursday in a courtroom on the first floor of the downtown Wake County jail, Atwater, handcuffed and shackled, was quiet, not speaking except to softly respond, "Yes, sir" or "No, sir" to Superior Court Judge Ripley Rand's routine questions.

Little mention was made of the murder charge that he faces in Orange County in Carson's killing. But Renfer, a Raleigh lawyer representing Atwater on the probation charges, told Rand that it was probation officers who stopped seeing Atwater, not the other way around.

"He had been reporting and paying, and all of a sudden they stopped scheduling payments," Renfer said.

Atwater, according to Renfer and the Granville County transcript, was an Apex High School graduate who had worked for a custodial services contractor at the RBC Center and Alltel Pavilion. He applied to both Durham and Wake Technical Community colleges but didn't have the money to attend, Renfer said.

After the hearing, Renfer said Atwater wanted better supervision.

"He wishes that they would have paid more attention," Renfer said.

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